OK, so saying Longlegs is a bad horror film in the title is both kinda provocative as generally speaking, it’s been well received, and it also isn’t leaving my readers wondering of my take on the movie.
But rather than this just be a simple review, I’d rather take the time to state that I think it was bad, and then break down why I say this. For context, I saw the film using an unlimited cinema ticket, so it cost me the same whether I saw it or not.
Before seeing the film, I’d only vaguely seen trailers which said it was the best thing or scariest thing since Silence of the Lambs, and other than that I had a hint from somewhere that it may feature Nicholas Cage, I knew absolutely nothing about it or the plot. I actually thought the title Longlegs was to refer to the long legs of the law as they say.
For me, I will say that the film, which was directed by Osgood Perkins, did genuinely seem scary for maybe the first half an hour. The opening scene with the old fashioned camera effect and screen size made you feel that we were getting a glimse into a different and more dangerous time. The film showed a little girl, who later we’d find out was the main character Lee Harker as a child, and that she saw through a window a distant car with a figure sat in the driver’s seat. This is the classic Halloween trick of Laurie looking out the school window and having something ominous be there and be far enough away to create a sense of threat but that it was also threat at a not quite safe distance. The kid goes to investigate only to find the car now empty, and quickly the sense of distant unclear threat changes with a jump scare as we get a glimpse of Nicholas Cage as the film’s villain ‘Longlegs’.
Cage is barely seen and does a creepy voice, but one that is still very Nicholas Cage.
The film then skips forward a bunch of years and we meet an adult Lee who is newly an FBI agent. Her and a partner go to knock door to door at houses, and Lee is shown to have some kind of sixth sense to know which house has a bad person in. The partner doesn’t believe her and gets shot and killed immediately. This is another jump scare of the we expect it, but not sure exactly when it’ll happen variety so it still made me jump.
And here’s one of the issues I have with the movie. After this, Lee is shown to have some kind of clairvoyance, but it’s not really used much and hardly explained how or when or why this works. The FBI dude in charge wants her help because of this psychic ability, and then instead of using it in any meaningful way she instead solves mysterious letters and codes left by the killer known as Longlegs just by studying them and working out their patterns. It’s ridiculous that no one else would have been able to decode them. And this leads me to the next issue.
The film has these codes and clues but I don’t think they are anything that the audience can play along with. It’s just random stuff that doesn’t make much sense even after they explain it. With this kind of element in a film, it’s only really fun for the audience if we get a sense of ‘oh yeah!’ when the answer comes and things are solved.
The only reason Lee is on this case is because of her clairvoyance, and we don’t really see much use of it. I swear the only reason this film is compared to Silence of the Lambs is because the main character is a rookie female FBI agent after a serial killer who does things in a mysterious way…I mean when I say that, it sounds exactly like Silence of the Lambs, but in execution and all the finer details mean this is nothing like that movie.
The film uses a lot of static camera shots and this leads you to start exploring the shots with your eyes to spot threats. Horror films will usually use the stillness to create a sense that you can’t see what is just out of shot or in the background, and this film does this well…to begin with. After a good half an hour of there not being anything to spot, I kind of realised that after the openings scene where there was something scary to see in the distance, that this wasn’t how this film operated.
The film plays around with satanic themes and where as Silence of the Lambs is purely grounded in reality, this film is all about satanic stuff and mind control. Longlegs uses lifelike dolls which contain an magic orb to brainwash fathers into killing their families. Why? Who knows. I don’t think the film gives any explanation.
Also Lee manages to decode the letters and sees some pattern of triangles that link to the number of the devil 666…but why? Why does Longlegs need to leave coded letters as clues, or create this triangle in the letters? There’s no need for it other than to help the FBI catch him. And it’s not that you even get that he was playing a game with them.
The big reveal is that Lee is the little girl from the start of the movie and that that her mother did a deal of sorts with Longlegs that if he spare her, that she would become his accomplice and do his bidding…I think. I was genuinely losing interest in the film and finding myself becoming distracted at times.
So, if Longlegs can control people’s minds with magic orbs – with no explanation of how he gained the ability to do this, why make a deal with the mother, and not just use an orb to control her? Maybe he did. He’d then get this easter egg sized orbs hidden inside life sized realistic…ish dolls delivered by a nun (which was Lee’s mother) into families for girl’s birthdays who are aged 9. Why did he need them inside life sized dolls? Why not just in something small, or just poke them in through a window if they’d work the same.
And why do the girls need to be 9? Maybe because a nine upside down looks like a six and that’s the devil number? I’m not sure. Also they said that the murders happen with six days around the birthday which is just a vague pattern which I didn’t understand the significance of.
The film was obvious of where it was heading for it’s climax after a very early scene where Lee’s FBI boss Agent Carter (no not the Marvel one) introduces Lee to his wife and daughter…just a couple of scenes after saying that the killer gets fathers to murder their own families.
In the last third of the film we do see Nick Cage as Longlegs properly and he has heavy makeup on his face and to be honest it’s just so so bad. If you’ve ever seen the makeup they used on the face of the guy who played George McFly in Back to the Future 2, to make him appear to be Crispin Glover, you’ll never unsee this when looking at Longlegs again. There is a reason why the fake George McFly only ever appeared in the background of scenes.
I was bored of the film by about the halfway point, and the build up to the ending only slightly caught my interest again. They do a good job to make the film seem ominous and even a little scary at times with the camera work and music, but the story and pacing and predictability of it all makes it a massive dud for me.
All this said, whilst I don’t plan to watch this again any time in the future, I half have the feeling that it could be one of those films where I could appreciate it more knowing exactly what it is and what it isn’t and may find something better in there on a future viewing…
I’m really not sure why people seem to say it’s good. Maybe I’m missing something that others see in it. Or maybe because I went into it blind I didn’t have the same expectations as others. But should you have to see all the trailers and read all the interviews and plot in advance to get the most out of a film? For me, maybe I was let down by the one thing I had heard and that was comparing it to the Silence of the Lambs. For me, other than the rookie female FBI hunting serial killer aspect there is no reason to put these films in the same sentence.
