There is something about the Osgood Perkins’ “Longlegs” that seeks to shock you, disturb you and make you think about it long after the movie is over. Longlegs, a film that Perkins has made, has been overly dramatized and has gestures from the performance all through to the sound and was more of a bad dream than of realism. In that regard, even if the film has major narrative attachments, the closest other film that is able to make heads or tails of should be more of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs”. Admittedly, there is an almost female FBI agent plus a male sociopathic serial killer but Perkins is looking to do something entirely different if not arresting. It’s just like watching the scene were clarice is scouring for the storage unit in the overbearing dark, the only difference being the duration which is 100 minutes. The amount of space available is virtually none.
Sometimes Perkins loses that fever-dream tone for audiences all too familiar with the structure, as is the case with the weird and forced conventions which try to explain what has been going on for the last hour throughout a late film exposition. Dream structures make exposition dumps or unnecessary explanations of events quite irrelevant. A lot of times it might come across as nitpicky, but it is a recurrent weakness that undermines the overall strength of “Longlegs.” Considering how well Neons tried, even though the film is bound to get a low Cinemascore, the strangeness of the film at times does not seem like it wants to go all the way in being weird and creepy, but rather explains or tones down the intent when it should be more about perplexity than clarity. As it turns out, the confusion of recollecting nightmares is something that stays forever in our minds even without explanations.
The movie revolves around what might be its strongest scene, which is a flashback shot as if it were from a family recording but being watched from a projector inside a crafts room. Here, a car drives to a quiet house and a little girl is seen exiting it. Perkin begins right away angling the shot, putting the focus into a single frame and almost restricting the shot to a child’s perspective of the scene that is being introduced and would intertwine into much of the future.
Let’s say years have passed and it is a typical ‘90s autumn day much like the one in the picture that adorns the wall of the FBI Director’s office, Clinton still has not lost his charm, however some of the design feels older than that it is once more baffling how the movie presents its new agent Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe, as she enters for her first assignment. She seems to have caught a serial killer through instincts alone regardless of whom she’s up against, which prompts the FBI to conduct some mental evaluations on her for the reasons of her not being a typical agent. Unfortunately, that angle disappears somewhat as the plot progresses, only used to give Lee the necessary background of ‘special’. Perkins’s screenplay also suffers due to not building enough of that character in the first place. It is one of the many instances when “Longlegs” squandered an opportunity to embrace the Japanese identifying aspects. This film is plainly bizarre in American theaters, yet my contention is that it ought to be far more peculiar.
The peculiar role in which Nicolas Cage is cast, a sadistic murderer who seems to draw direct inspiration from Bundy and a Tim, is not going to wow us as he plays the role of the titular character. Harker’s family members have now begun to disappear, and much law enforcement has apprehended; only Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) is investigating the family slayings we all dread, those which include the father or mother killing their children and spouse before committing suicide. Unless an enigmatic person around the world sends grisly photos about the specifics of the Valentine murders and taunting letters about the quest with pointed killing dates in his lunatic style, nobody would regard it as even remotely suspicious. How is this Longlegs person able to pull off such horrifying acts? And what significance does the date have? Agree in this case with Lee’s extremely religious mother Ruth, who never misses an opportunity to ask her daughter about praying. It becomes obvious that Lee is going to require those prayers.
In Longlegs, it appears as if everything has been put in place and selected by the best American director/writer such as the talent behind The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. This ranges from the consistently low camera angles that create an effective point of view throughout the watch, the quick flashes of images or sounds that are almost too mild for the audience, perhaps even the characters’ names. I am not going to offer spoilers, but Lee has something to do with the longlegs who are badass vampires and I started believing Harker to be the reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and I am pretty sure it is). And is it a coincidence that Kiki is the only surviving member of the Camera family, and that this character is played by Kiernan Shipka, who made an astonishing impact in her one scene role? In the end, Lee’s camera, or Perkins’ for that matter, is what tells the story.
There is considerable appeal in this sort of film analysis and it will definitely lead to countless TikToks and YouTube videos attempting to make connections like the one above. But it’s difficult to measure how tight a film’s calibration can go whilst expecting such a story to be this feel utterly chaotic. There is a version of “Longlegs” whose puppetshow elements are less conspicuous, and does not feel like the need to resolve everything with an absurdly long expository monologue. And “Longlegs” has such a monologue that is so poorly written, not just because nightmares are better when they leave you with some questions, but because, well, the subsequent dramatic scenes serve the same purpose of plots anyway. In this movie there is a possessed doll, and a psychic FBI man, and a serial killer who is into Satan. I don’t believe all the dots need to be joined.
And yet, considering Perkins’ skills in framing, mood, and creating tension, it’s impossible to completely write off ‘Longlegs.’ Fans of horror will probably embrace the film because of its brutality the murders in it are violent and rather crunchy at times but there are also pertinent questions to ask on how far faith can be stretched, how far evil can stain, and how much of the story is actually the will of the characters’ own parents. (Another interesting interpretation of the film is: how much Anthony Perkins hid from his family when he was “Osgood’s father” and how much his mother’s death on 9/11 has to do with a movie that is all about generational trauma.) No one is disengaged in “Longlegs,” so clearly that level of dedication to craft and design matters. Perhaps the reason for disappointment is that it does not deliver the punch that promotional clips claim it had, but nightmare have that uncertainty.
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