Maika Monroe and Nicholas Cage Will Creep Audiences Out in Longlegs

How would you feel having real life fears of the Boogeyman come to life as a child, go away and come back to you as an an adult to terrorize you mentally?

“It’s sort of like a horror movie mixtape,” director Osgood Perkins says, describing his film. “This movie really does have kind of everything in it when it comes to the expectations of the genre. There’s an axe massacre. There’s a serial killer. There’s the devil. There’s the FBI. There’s creepy dolls. There’s creepy barns. So it really has this kind of milkshake quality to it of having everything in it.”

Longlegs tells the story of Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a brand new-ish FBI agent who lives in the rainforest of Oregon. In her earliest days on the job, she susses out a murder perp through an uncanny level of perception. That hunch leads her down a rabbit hole of clues that ultimately bring her right home revealing more than she bargained for. Feeling like a spin on Silence of the Lambs, there are more twists and turns than the Pacific Coast Highway.

Perkins’ use of color and aesthetics is exquisite. The opening sequence starts out in red, slowing melting to black and white until landing in color on a little girl in pigtails living in a white house.  Split into three chapters, audiences goes on this ride with Lee from the criminal’s letters to realizing all his crimes land on a specific day of the month.

Every performance is spot on. Maika Monroe excels as harker making her a human pressure cooker within seconds of boiling over.  Nicholas Cage, known for taking on usual characterizations for the screen, is particularly disturbing. Almost recognizable, he is as creepy as they come and is very gifted at portraying wonderfully tortured souls – with Ronny Cammareri in Moonstruck being one of them. Yet, the most surprising cast member was Blair Underwood seemingly stepping outside his comfort zone and I was there for all of it

I jumped, gasped, laughed and was mostly intrigued by Longlegs and you mostly likely will be as well. Even though it reaches back to a story that feels familiar yet different – with elements of devil worship at the core of the story, this flick had me with one eye open and the lights on for a few days.