Longlegs: The-Devil-Made-Them-Do-It FBI Procedural Uses Nic Cage to Quick, Wicked Effect
By Jim Slotek
Rating: A-minus
Nicolas Cage as a Satanic serial killer who has the apparent ability to make his victims kill their entire families and themselves for him? Yeah, that casting works.
But the interesting thing about the remarkably intense, violent police-procedural/occult-drama Longlegs is that it doesn’t overplay the Cage card.
Maika Monroe as Agent Lee Harker in Longlegs
His character is only partially seen for the longest time – like Pennywise in It - and when we do see him, he is so made up as the character that no one would ever know it’s him (but for the opening credits announcing “Nicolas Cage as Longlegs.”). It’s like being told who’s playing Jason Voorhees.
The only certifiably “Cage” moments come when Longlegs unleashes his primal scream – any one of which could be seamlessly added to the popular “Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit” film montages on YouTube.
The fact is, though, that Longlegs is the subject, but not the protagonist of Longlegs, a film that stands as a career achievement for director Osgood Perkins (the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, how perfect is that?).
The star, Maika Monroe, carries the film with a deadpan performance of barely-contained fear and resolve. Like The Silence of the Lambs’ Clarice, her Agent Lee Harker is a young, unproven FBI agent who comes face-to-face with, effectively, the Devil himself. (Longlegs may make you think of other films and character, including Se7en and, maybe, Chucky and Annabelle – possessed dolls having a supporting role).
Lee is one of the agents assigned to a head-scratching series of murders that are all apparent murder-suicides, save for a note at each scene with some sort of symbolic language, and the signature “Longlegs.” The only connector is that each event occurs close to a little girl victim’s mid-month birthday.
It is then that Lee brings her hitherto unrevealed psychic abilities to bear, accelerating the moribund investigation (the FBI, who apparently can measure these things, find her cognition powers to be off the charts).
And, it’s implied, there’s a connection between Lee and Longlegs that can’t be hidden from her FBI bosses forever.
As a procedural, Longlegs doesn’t always stand up. The investigation under grumpy Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) sometimes seems inept (the “indecipherable” hieroglyphics might get a chuckle from anyone addicted to word games).
But it’s the little things that make it a great horror film. Jump-scares may be a cliché these days, but when you see someone who does it with flair and timing, you realize what a skill it is. And the filming itself is skillful. The flashback scenes use, to great effect, an unsettling aspect-ratio that evoke old Kodak photos.
Dreams, existential dread, parental betrayal, the fragile safety of one’s home and the inevitability of evil are all infernal versions of grace-notes in the film.
The mood is sustained on the soundtrack by a kind of gothic classical moan, save for the occasional wry inclusion of song snippets (Who knew that, of all classic rock bands, T. Rex was the Devil’s music? There’s even a repeatedly seen picture of Marc Bolan above Longlegs’ bed).
As for the antagonist, the secret seems to be, let Nicolas Cage go as crazy as he wants to – just less frequently for greatest effect.
Longlegs. Directed by Osgood Perkins. Starring Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage and Blair Underwood. In theatres Friday, July 12.