An unrecognisable Nicolas Cage features in the decidedly creepy crime-horror-thriller Longlegs.
A figure sits in a car looking at a little girl in a small house. She comes out to see who it is. Suddenly he confronts her. At first, we only see him from the nose down and says: “There she is, the almost birthday girl. Oh, but it seems I wore my long legs today. What happens if I …” At that point the opening credits roll. It turns out the day was 13th January, 1974, the day before the girl’s 9th birthday.
After the initial credits, we cut to an FBI briefing. There is a manhunt going on and one of those undertaking a door-to-door search with an assigned partner is Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe). She appears to be a taciturn figure, who instinctively chooses the house where the suspect is holed up. Given her psychic ability, Harker is subsequently assigned to a particularly baffling case. The FBI is on the manhunt for a serial killer who has instigated the murders of 10 families, carried out by their own fathers over 30 years. But while the dads perpetrated the slayings inside their own homes, they appear to have been driven to do so from the outside. Each time, a letter was left with the bodies, written in a coded alphabet and not in the hand of anyone connected to the families. All were signed “Longlegs”. What the families had in common was that they all had daughters with birthdays on the 14th of any given month.
Agent Harker goes to work under the auspices of veteran Agent Carter (Blair Underwood). It is work that will uncover skeletons in her closet, that will bring her face-to-face with the forces of evil. In the process we uncover that she has an uneasy relationship with her God-fearing mother Ruth (Alicia Witt) who was a nurse for eight years.
Longlegs is a complex web of a movie, well-conceived and executed, if you pardon the pun. There’s a lot at play here. It’s tense throughout and takes considerable time to piece the threads together. In fact, it’s all the better because of that. In other words, you have to work at it. With some bloody imagery, you need to have a strong stomach, but most of it is suggestive rather than visual.
Longlegs is the work of writer and director Oz Perkins. It is a film influenced by chiller thrillers The Silence of the Lambs and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It has a sinister underbelly. As it progresses, the noose tightens around the neck of Agent Harker. Her aloof, methodical character, as displayed by Maika Munroe in a role where she impresses, is appropriate to the material to which we are privy. Blair Underwood is convincing as a natural born leader, but without the sixth sense that Agent Harker possesses. He remains calm but insistent. Nicolas Cage is off in his own world, deranged, demented and driven as the villain, Longlegs.
The music bed by Elvis Perkins underpins the scary nature of the picture, which continues to work away at your psyche. Dare I say, Longlegs is the stuff of nightmares.
Alex First
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Alex First is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.