Writer-director Osgood Perkins crafts a suspenseful, captivatingly strange serial killer horror with Longlegs. Our review:
Glossiness has a distancing effect that isn’t immediately noticeable until you watch a movie without any. Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs is a serial killer thriller that sits far outside the expensive sets and flashy production design of a studio genre film. Its interiors are drab and cramped; faces look lined and wan. A slick of dust and grime lies thickly on just about every surface; like the best genre films of the 1970s and 1980s, there’s the sense that the biggest maniac of the whole piece might actually be its director.
A photo of Bill Clinton hanging on a wall suggests that we’ve been thrown back to 1993. Longlegs’ premise, on the other hand, is ripped straight from the tabloid headlines of the 1960s and 70s. Young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is on the trail of a serial killer who somehow massacres entire families without entering their homes; the only sign of his passing are a series of notes written in a code clearly inspired by the real-world Zodiac killer.
The cases have remained unsolved for years, but when Harker displays an almost supernatural talent for tracking down murderers, senior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) brings her onto the Longlegs case. As Harker begins to investigate, she begins to notice eerie connections between the killer and her own murky history.
From its suffocatingly tense opening, shot in a straightjacket-like academy ratio, Longlegs is an exercise in sustained dread. The early stages of Perkins’ story will be recognisable to genre devotees – it’s equal parts Thomas Harris and Stephen King – but the atmosphere the director generates is all his own.
Working on a low budget, Perkins’ use of lenses, low angles and queasily naturalistic lighting are reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s earliest films like Shivers and Rabid; there’s a similar feeling, too, that nothing is taboo or off the table. Longlegs isn’t a particularly graphic film – one or two notably grisly scenes excepted – but its opening moments establish a desolate, godless landscape where just about anything could happen.
Monroe, her voice a childlike whisper, puts in a watchably unusual performance. Like Silence Of The Lambs’ Clarice Starling with a side order of complex PTSD and social awkwardness, she introduces a welcome hint of deadpan humour to the role, not least in a standout scene where she’s forced to engage in a painful bout of small talk with her Agent Carter’s nine year-old daughter.
At the other end of the acting spectrum, there’s Nicolas Cage as the title character. Wisely kept out of Longlegs’ promotional material, he’s almost unrecognisable in the role of the Marc Bolan-obsessed killer. It’s another outre, borderline indescribable turn Cage can add to his growing catalogue of feral performances.
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Not that Longlegs is really Cage’s film, or Monroe’s or even Alicia Witt’s, who’s hypnotic as the most devoutly religious mother this side of Piper Laurie in Carrie. Rather, this is a showcase for Perkins’ ability to create an entire world out of a few limited locations and cluttered interiors. Audiences’ mileage may vary with the direction Perkins takes the story in its latter stages – this writer preferred the slow burn of Harker following clues of the first half – but Longlegs is nevertheless a icily effective piece of genre filmmaking.
Shot on location in Vancouver, its autumnal setting has a purgatorial air of evil that buries its way under the skin. There are welcome moments of black humour to cut through the gloom, and some familiar plot points to remind us that this is all just a movie, but Longlegs might be the most unnerving and flat out strange horror you’ll see in a cinema this year.
This is Osgood Perkins’ nightmare, and for 100 minutes, we’re all trapped in it.
Longlegs is out in UK cinemas on the 12th July.
