Unsettling, unnerving, terrifying, director Oz Perkins’ latest triumph Longlegs is a satanic hippy-comedown tour-de-force that sets the bar for horror this year.
The cryptic messages, the ominous photos, the terror of a hidden threat about to strike – yes, I’m talking about the viral marketing for Longlegs, the new horror movie from director Osgood Perkins that had the whole internet asking “what on earth is going on here?”, “why is this so upsetting to me?” and “will this be one of Nicholas Cage’s good ones?”
It turns out that Longlegs is a nightmarish serial-killer horror film that aims to turn viewers’ minds inside out. Maika Monroe (It Follows (2014), Watcher (2022)) stars as FBI investigator Lee Harker, with Cage as her deeply unsettling quarry, concealed deep in the background or just off the side of the frame for most of the film, leaving anxious viewers wondering exactly what he looks like. So ominous is Cage, in fact, with his sing-song voice and predatory ambience, that viewers will wonder if he is entirely human – leaving the film suspended between the bleak thrills of Seven (1995) or The Silence of The Lambs (1991), and the supernatural dread and dark ennui of True Detective Season One (2014).
Set in the Clinton era, the film follows highly intuitive – and possibly psychic – Agent Harker as she investigates a series of family murders stretching back to the end of the 60s. Each crime scene showed no sign of an intruder, with all the killings seemingly carried out by family members. And yet also present at each scene is a Zodiac-style letter in cryptographic symbols , signed “Longlegs”. Soon Harker catches the attention of the killer (Cage), leading to a cat-and-mouse game of wits.
Director Osgood ‘Oz’ Perkins is the man behind cult horror gems I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House (2016), The Blackcoat’s Daughter (aka February, 2015) and doomy fairy tale Gretel and Hansel (2020). Each one of those is expertly suffused with tension and dread, and Longlegs is no exception.
Perkins uses all the tools of visual language at his disposal – blocking, framing, editing – to draw viewers in the film’s eerie, nightmarish atmosphere. Even before the title card appears, we witness Longlegs teasingly introducing himself to a young girl outside a snowy rural home – an ominous, creepy exchange that leaves us squirming. As the scene concludes, the aspect ratio starts to creep outwards and the frame floods with red, in the first of a series of visual disruptions that will keep viewers squirming.
The sound design in Longlegs is equally crucial, weaving from whispers to a shrieking cacophony without warning. These abrupt shifts jolt and disorientate as if the film is attempting to deliver a form of auditory brainwashing. Layering this on top of his visual playfulness, Perkins proves a master at keeping viewers squirming.
In fact, Longlegs sits alongside Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Chime as the two greatest horrors of the year so far, with both of them push their craft into uncanny areas seemingly designed to operate directly through the subconscious. If you’re susceptible, Longlegs will leave you convulsing with fear.
Much as with Perkins’ Gretel and Hansel, Longlegs has the feel of a fairy story. The witchy figure at the centre is teasing the maiden with a riddle, and she’s intrigued, coming in for a closer look. But Longlegs’ very name suggests he is a spider, and Harker a fly. Is she enmeshing herself in an inescapable web?
There’s much to chew on for students of cultural history, too. Right at the start we are presented with lyrics from the T Rex classic Get It On (Bang a Gong) – ‘Well you’re slim and you’re weak / you’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you,’ and as the film progresses, we hear more T Rex, and see albums by Lou Reed and other glam rock acts. Together with what we’ve seen of Longlegs’ long hair, and fanciful new age patter, this puts us squarely in post-hippy comedown era. The killings started at the end of the 60s, and most of the flashbacks are from the 70s. Even the shots of Clinton’s portrait seem ominous, as who could represent the death of the hippy dream better than the herald of the ‘third way’? When placed alongside Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy this means both of producer/star Nicholas Cage’s last two truly great horror films have dealt with this post-Manson darkness – a world that has lost its way.
It’s not entirely perfect – a twist is explained twice via flashback where once would have done, and the final moments could be construed as the film pulling its punches ever so slightly – but these are minor gripes.
Longlegs is a triumph – unsettling, terrifying, a satanic tour de force that slowly drags the audience into hell. Its stylish cinematography and meticulous sound design each work to render the audience susceptible to its atmosphere of oneiric dread, and then punctuate that with jolts of visceral violence. Combining the unnerving blocking of I Am The Pretty Thing… the plot twists of The Blackcoat’s Daughter and the ominous fable of Gretel and Hansel, this is Perkins’ greatest work to date. Audiences will be haunted and mesmerized by the playful dread of Longlegs, which sets the bar for horror this year.
★★★★½
Longlegs is released in cinemas in the UK and US on July 12.
Whitlock&Pope 