Review: Longlegs

Longlegs is a movie that works in the moment. Scenes are soaked in dread; the whole point is that what you're watching is scary right now. Some horror movies get bigger as you consider their implications. This one is happy to provide 90-odd minutes of skin-crawling tension.

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is the kind of hyper-focused, socially awkward detective familiar from decades of film and television. New to the FBI, her instincts (psychic or not) during a door-to-door search prove sharp enough to get her bumped up to assisting veteran agent Carter (Blair Underwood) on a very cold case that just might be heating up. Her partner on the search ended up dead; her instincts might not be coming from a mutually beneficial place. 

The case involves a string of family murder-suicides seemingly sparked by strange coded letters sent by a figure known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Nothing in the case seems to add up. Harker cracks the code but the messages are just the usual taunts, Longlegs himself is a creepy freak but his role seems less clear as events progress, the sole survivor (Kiernan Shipka) is fresh out of her coma but less than helpful and each new clue (what's going on with the giant dolls?) only muddies the waters.

This is clearly riffing on a number of classic serial killer films - Seven and Silence of the Lambs come to mind - though this eventually slips sideways into a slightly different genre. It's all retro-stylings (the film is set in the 90s), chilly rural landscapes, dingy houses and big winter coats. The weather forecast says "ominous foreboding".

Monroe's earnest but slightly distant performance only adds to the tension, playing the kind of character you know will keep going past the point where someone more easily unsettled (that is, most of humanity) would be running like a maniac. Maybe blame her mother (Alicia Witt), who, it's increasingly clear, has issues of her own.

As the story progresses the bad vibes grow. The FBI, it becomes clear, is an unsafe space; even when they get the job done, nobody's sure it's the right job. Writer-director Oz Perkins isn't telling a story where all the pieces fall into place. They just fall on the floor in a pattern that's unsettling without ever being fully satisfying.

Cage is only in the film for a handful of scenes, though they're memorable ones. It's surprising to realise his brand of off-kilter performance hasn't been harnessed for straight-out horror earlier. He's often left audiences thinking "what the hell am I watching?". This time hell might be the answer as well as the question.

- Anthony Morris