Longlegs Review - Thrilling Enough, If Not Scary

Longlegs Review Movie Talkies

Longlegs Review: Osgood Perkins brings one of the most promising horror thrillers of the year, only to leave me in two minds. Yes, it is thrilling, but is it horrifying? I think it's not even a horror film. I'd rather call it a serial-killer mystery with a devious touch of Satan and dark magic. Longlegs does include enough surprises to leave you stunned for a while, but it's definitely not as scary as you would have expected it to be.

Set in the 1990s, the film sees a new FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), being assigned to an unsolved case involving the Satanic serial killer known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Interestingly, Lee has seen a similar man in her childhood but can't recollect what exactly that was. As the investigation becomes more complicated with occult evidence uncovered, Harker begins to realize her childhood link to the killer and must act quickly to prevent another family murder, which she can now predict after the methodical study of the killer. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) is surprised to see this sudden flow in the case, and then the story actually ends with his family. How? I won't tell you that. Watch the film to learn more.

Longlegs struggles to find a quick start, which I believe is very important for a horror thriller, especially when you are running for about one and a half hours. The screenplay picks up in the middle and then again loses momentum in the second half. It recovered decently in the last quarter, though. However, it's a little late by then. Things could have been quicker and a lot more scary than this. Come on, I mean, you can't scare me with the doll when I'm done watching Chucky and Anabelle long ago and that worshipping the Satan stuff has been well explored by South Korean directors with "The Wailing" and "Exhuma." I need an update, bro, not the old app.

Maika Monroe wandered throughout the film as an FBI agent but failed to convince me to believe that she was playing a brave FBI girl. I would have taken her for a sacred teenage girl who is haunted by the devil, but she's nowhere close to the FBI agent's image I have in mind. Nicolas Cage gets only a half-dozen scenes and still overshadows everyone in the film. Those prosthetics were a little disturbing, but nothing harmful. Alicia Witt won me over, and Blair Underwood was decent. The supporting cast of Dakota Daulby, Jason Day, Kiernan Shipka, Lisa Chandler, Carmel Amit, and others were okay.

Longlegs is a masterwork in technical departments. Andrés Arochi's camera work is excellent. Watch out for the widening and narrowing frames as they explore different timelines and different aspects of the storyline. Also, look for those dark scenic frames of dark nature and how well they fit in wide frames. The background score is too good and does scare you a bit, but there aren't too many scenes like that. The film needed a quicker start and middle portion that Greg Ng and Graham Fortin's editing failed to provide, whereas the production design was fantastic.

Osgood Perkins had a decent story in hand and a good enough cast to carry it all the way. He did fairly well, but the load of expectations for this genre makes that fair job look average. And it's fair to say that, I guess. You must know the potential of the horror genre and how it delves into the unspoken and unbelievable circumstances of human lives. Perkins understood, but only half, I guess. Longlegs belongs more to humans than the actual devil, and that's why it feels underwhelming. It doesn't matter how good the technical aspects, performances, and surprises are; you are entitled to feel empty once the show is over. Bringing emotional attachments into the horror zone must be the reason, I believe, but it's still a watchable affair. That's all, that's all there is to it. Nothing much. Don't believe that "Don't come alone, or else" crap from the poster.