Our prayers protect us from the devil. Since the 70’s, a string of unsolved brutal murder-suicides involving perfectly normal families has lingered over the Pacific Northwest into the 90’s. There’s never been any momentum to link anyone to the killings, mainly because no one knows a suspect looks like, and the crime scenes themselves have shown no sign of forced entry—these awful crimes all originate from within the home.

The case gets a fresh set of eyes and a bright mind in the form of Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), an FBI agent. After displaying foundational psychic abilities that lead to the arrest of another serial killer, her supervisor Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) puts her on the open case. The only clues at crime scenes are cryptic, occult-symboled notes signed by an individual known as “Longlegs” (Nicolas Cage). Harker begins deciphering the meaning, and her research drags her deeper and deeper into a literal and figurative hell that she must escape from before the bloodshed happens again.

Hype is something real, and it is a machine when the ball gets rolling. Enter Longlegs, since the first trailer it’s pretty much been on the Mount Rushmore of the most anticipated movies of 2024. Like anything with hype, high expectations typically tend to follow, and those high expectations rarely equate to match reality. Realize all of that sounds like I’m super negative of the movie—I’m not—it’s just hard to not feel a smidge underwhelmed.

There are a couple of stone cold certainties after the release of Longlegs. One being the official arrival of director Osgood Perkins into the mainstream horror market. His vision and direction is a confident one, both relying on his talented cast and adding flourishes of his own. So many of his scenes are front and center-locked on subjects, with a 4:3 aspect ratio compressed added to amp up the tension, and others embrace an almost never-ending, slightly off-kilter approach, as if we’re disconnected from reality. The perpetually gray state of Washington (this wasn’t filmed too far away in Vancouver) is a perfect setting for the dour story. Technically, it’s an awesome production.

The other stone cold certainty? Monroe is one of the best thespians of her generation, regardless of genre. True, most of her movies fall neatly under the horror umbrella cementing her status as a scream queen, but that moniker undersells how great she is. In Longlegs, she plays her detective character perfectly, her methodical delivery and cautious countenance highlighting Harker’s meld of intuition and intelligence. Of course, there’s the one and only Cage sinking his teeth into a persona which runs the gamut from darkly hilarious early on to diabolically hellacious the more we spend time with him. So much of the high praise has gone to these two, but can’t go without acknowledging Underwood. The veteran actor gets a lot of screen time in his first true horror feature as the grounding block around all the swelling chaos, and his personal spiral into madness is a hard one to watch.

Longlegs starts impressively. Perkins’ script immediately creates a sense of unbeatable incoming doom, nestled within a compelling crime procedural rife with details visually and verbally that I’m confident will enhance the film on subsequent rewatches. However, one early detail revolving around when the gruesome murders take place and how a key character’s loved one shares a date creates not so much a Chekhov’s gun situation, more a flashing neon light situation that effectively gives up the framework of its climax. The decision here makes some of the second act feel like filler. All said, the crux of his story presents an interesting analysis of parental protection, and how the figurative depths parents may choose to go to shield their children from evil can often be a net negative.

Courtesy of an elite lead performer, two strong supporting actors, and a precise eye behind the camera, Longlegs will go down as one of the movies that won 2024, guaranteed to have a long life online. Even if it stumbles over massive hype at times, it never trips and falls over it.

B–

Photo credits go to theplaylist.net, dailydead.com, and giantfreakingrobot.com.

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