Longlegs

dir: Osgood Perkins

2024

I… did not like this. I had been assured that it was the scariest film of the year, but that’s not even where it falls down. Scary, like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder. Some jaded eyes aren’t going to recoil in terror at the same things as others, they’re just going to roll in contempt or irritation.

I think I just expected too much of this director. I really loved one of his previous films, being I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, which doesn’t operate as a conventional horror film at all, but still really worked for me. I couldn’t even tell you why that flick works and this one doesn’t, other than to point out the difference in expectations, in that I had none the first time I saw that flick, and had plenty when I saw this flick.

Nicolas Cage, and this is something I don’t usually get to type, is not the problem with the film. His performance as the so-called Longlegs of the title neither improves the flick nor sinks it. It’s strange, unhinged, unsettling and unpleasant, but that’s what you want in a flick, probably.

Nor is the actual lead performance in the flick, being played by Maika Monroe, the problem. The performance isn’t great, and is pointlessly distracting, but the way she carries herself as the main detective trying to figure out how someone is murdering entire families and yet leaving no physical evidence at the crime is fine for the film’s purposes.

The problem is pretty much everything else that isn’t the mood setting stuff, the pervasive feeling of dread, the deliberately ugly set design or the discomforting soundtrack and sound design.

It’s both the problem of the story and the plot. It’s both mundane, as in, though it’s set in about 1994, but there’s also something supernatural going on. It’s deliberately trying to remind us of Silence of the Lambs, but to this flick’s detriment, because this ain’t anywhere near as good as that earlier flick. It’s horrifying in its content, but not in a way that makes an impact on the viewer, or at least this viewer.

It contains, I’m guessing, personal obsessions of the director’s, but not in a way that resonate with the audience, I don’t think. There are so many references, to other films, to real life murders, but instead of adding weight it just feels like accumulated pastiche, but with zero humour.

The flick unspools in ways that mimic what we have come to expect from all these fucking samey serial killer thrillers (brilliant but alienated / rude / on the spectrum detectives who make wildly intuitive leaps that the plot always goes along with for efficiency’s sake, who are one step behind the brilliant / evil / charismatic villain who is thwarted just at the last possible second before killing someone the detective cares about). And yet it also makes it a personal story for the lead character in ways that, well, boggle the fucking mind.

The main villain’s motivation is pretty much nonsense. Even if I buy that this ‘genius’ with a real talent for building creepy dolls is powered by Satan, I find that the nonsensical nature of his crimes, being, that he really hates families, is just not shocking or impactful. It seems needlessly, pointlessly convoluted. He has the power to do whatever, warp people’s minds, compel them to do things against their will.

And this is what he does, according to some inverted triangle design, some vague mathematical stuff and leaving coded messages to police…

For reasons? Like, all of these stories, all the other flicks we remember that are either about real murderers or fictional monsters, sure, they all do extravagant things in order to leave a trail, their egos demanding that they mock the cops or the victims in order to put the icing on top of getting away with murder multiple times. Sometimes they are genuinely what we used to feel comfortable calling “insane”, so that even if they got away with it for a while, their motivations and actions were profoundly delusional.

But in this story we have a number of murderers, effectively: One who kills because he thinks it will trigger the events at the end of the Bible, which, you know, if we take fiction as fact still has The Devil losing badly in the end, and one who kills because of a reason that’s meant to resonate.

But the main confounding part of the ‘mystery’ for these intrepid FBI goofs is that these family annihilations are happening without any other obvious external involvement. There is no evidence at the scene in all these murders stretching back decades that indicates anyone other than the family members is present in the house when it happens.

And yet then there’s the ‘big’ reveal of how there is someone in the house when it happens, who doesn’t commit the murders but is always present, always witness to the carnage. And yet there never was anyone that saw the person and no DNA etc evidence ever left behind.

That’s like someone giving you a ‘locked room’ mystery to ponder over and then being told “a wizard did it” as the solution.

Ah, you would say, so clever, so witty. I never could have figured THAT one out!

And there’s something about Marc Bolan / T. Rex? Alice Cooper maybe. Lou Reed? Does any of that matter? Did The Devil make everyone do it? If you like the music of T. Rex, who, as far as I know, didn’t kill anyone and weren’t fans of family murder, you too could wonder what the ever-living fuck it has to do with this story. Their glam rock stylings may still be very popular on Gold 104, but for a story about a guy who makes magical dolls that allow him to make people kill other people, it’s not even window-dressing, it’s just another confusing element.

Special Agent Lee Harker stumbles through the flick as a pawn to some grand game that she doesn’t understand until someone explains it all to her at the end, but there’s not a lot for us to enjoy along the way, other than the unsettling atmosphere, and the unhinged Cage performance.

And, yeah, let’s get back to that: he dresses like a pudgy guy you might see down the Pokies club, or at a TAB, has painfully pale skin, and stringy, dishevelled white hair that, let’s be honest, look a lot like mine does now. But there’s something about that face, something you might find unwatchable, under layers of latex, that doesn’t even come close to being as unsettling as the Johnny Depp-Willy Wonka voice he uses when he talks to children, or anyone, really.

Brrr, being reminded of that horrible flick will give me nightmares. This flick won’t.

5 times “the most disappointing flick of the year!” probably wouldn’t have sold as many tickets, but would have been more honest out of 10

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“Dad! That gross old guy is back!” - Longlegs