LONGLEGS (2024)

[indianasmith]

Holy cow! 
I just got back from the theater after watching this, and I was blown away and quite disturbed by it!
It is pretty well established that Nicholas Cage does batsh*t crazy better than anybody - we've seen it in multiple roles.  And it's equally well-established that his movies are a roll of the cinematic dice - he can give some of the laziest, most awful dialed-in performances, and he can also be incredibly brilliant at times. But there is one thing I've never seen Nick Cage do in any film before, that he knocked out of the park in this one:

He was bloody TERRIFYING!!!

A quick synopsis with minimal spoilers: A young female FBI agent named Lee Harker has demonstrated a level of intuitive leaps that suggest she may be borderline psychic.  So the Bureau brings her in on one of the most frustrating cold cases they are pursuing: the "Longlegs" murders.  For 20 years, families have been slaughtered.  In every case, the father butchers his entire family, then kills himself - but in every case, a mysterious letter in an indecipherable runic script is left at the scene, signed "Longlegs."  There's no sign of forced entry, no sign anyone else was ever there - just a butchered family and a mysterious letter.  But once Special Agent Harker is brought in on the case, things begin moving very rapidly.  Somehow, this killer is linked to the young agent - but how?

This movie reminded me, at times, of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, with a heavy overlay of HEREDITARY and the deep dread evoked by THE RING.  I'll be honest - the ending is brutal, and you can sense a gleeful evil radiating from Cage in his final scene that is downright unnerving!  I'm still processing this one, but I will say this is THE most effective horror movie I have seen this year.
5/5

[M.10rda]

This was the "bonus feature" following DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE last week at the drive-in. Two screens of that double-bill and both were sold out, btw, and most vehicles stuck around for this one. In fact, our neighbor's teenage son told me he saw it twice the previous (opening) week - so indeed people are digging this film. No one else has replied here (or posted elsewhere about LONGLEGS) so I suspect it's still too soon to discuss in great detail. Fortunately, digesting it for a week has given me a little ability to offer succinct thoughts:

IMHO this starts as a 5/5 and continues that way for a while, but the last 25 minutes drop to something like a 3/5. Justifying this reaction would require me to discuss a lot of plot specifics, and there's no sense in that if no one else on here has seen it yet. Very generally, I will suggest that Osgood Perkins is extremely elusive or even abstract about explaining many things or anything for 75 minutes - which is commendable - but then falls over himself to reveal certain things at the end, to great detriment to suspense and reason. The film has some similarities to David Lynch material, and Lynch would likely never bother to ever show the cards shown here - he'd commit to leaving the audience in a world of mystification and let us hash out what's important and what's not. Because Perkins allows some elements of LONGLEGS to remain obscure but then overexplicates on others, it renders his entire onscreen world as a place that's subject to literalism and rationalism... and if I think about the film's unanswered questions literally instead of allegorically, things start to fall apart.

I have seen a few other people suggest similar criticisms online, though (again) most viewers do love this film in toto. I do love the way Perkins visually depicts the title character for most of the film, w/ the same discretion and mileage that Ridley Scott demonstrated and earned in ALIEN. And Alicia Witt roars back into full-tilt DUNE/HOTEL ROOM hysterical madness, so that's a major selling point.

[Neville]

I really liked this one. It was sold to me as being creepy and having good acting from Nicholas Cage, but I ended up liking other things from it. The austere visuals, for instance. They haven't done much to them besides a slight distortion and darkening the sets, but damn it is effective. And although Cage is definitely good here, I preferred the subdued acting by Maika Monroe and Alicia Witt. Not what I expected when I heard they were starring in this.

I probably should watch it again, but I don't think the script made much sense, though. If it wasn't for that, I'd say it's one of the best horror movies of the year.

[M.10rda]

I would agree, Neville, that ultimately it doesn't make much sense. I feel like w/ some relatively small revisions its lack of "sense" could've been a boon, even, instead of a drawback. LONGLEGS wasn't anything like realism to begin with, so the less time Perkins spent trying to explain things, the better! When your hyperstylish thriller has massive inherent potholes, just speed riiight around those suckers while Nicolas Cage cackles manically... don't try to drive over/in 'em!

[Neville]

Normally I'd agree, but the premise was so wild that I really wanted to know how the killer pulled that off. Maybe the writer / director should have found a better way of saying that's not important.