2024 is proving to be a yr of horror, each unhealthy and good. The yr has featured among the most generic horror movies up to now in addition to some glorious new visions and scares. Oz Perkins‘ fourth function, Longlegs, in the end falls within the latter class, regardless of some familiarity within the floor it treads.
Whereas the movie is at its core a police procedural within the vein of The Silence of the Lambs, Perkins’ distinctive sense of environment, putting modifying selections, and heavy coat of Satanic scare make it a charming expertise regardless of its flaws. Opening on a startling sequence shot in academy ratio, the movie introduces Nicolas Cage simply off-center from body as Longlegs, setting a tone for the movie to come back. Perkins instructions an unsettling disquiet all through, teasing viewers with vast pictures that play in your expectations of what lurks within the nook of frames in movies like this one. Even when nothing comes, Perkins retains rigidity ramped up with smash cuts that throw you off and depart your coronary heart pounding.
Maika Monroe stars as an FBI agent who’s discovered to be “mildly psychic” and is quickly enlisted on the chilly case of Longlegs, a killer who manages to off complete households with out ever getting into their homes. The movie is one other in a current line of 90s-set movies, proving that the 2020s are the last decade of 90s nostalgia. Outstanding pictures of President Invoice Clinton’s portrait fill a number of frames, serving each as a interval reminder in addition to layering in among the thematic content material.
Monroe’s breakout in It Follows has led to her being dubbed one of many new Scream Queens. Whereas she isn’t any Jodie Foster, Monroe is an efficient viewers avatar, her intentionally quiet and muted efficiency serving to to move us into the movie and her confused perspective. The draw back of this alternative is that her character is kind of bland and forgettable, which is why she is not going to stand the take a look at of time like Clarice Starling. Monroe’s giving her greatest, however that is undoubtedly one of many weaker elements of the movie.
There’s additionally a good statement that the movie’s thriller doesn’t fairly maintain the environment. The third-act revelations maybe inevitable don’t reside as much as the sense of dread and foreboding that had been conjured. As exposition is expounded, the movie loses a few of its aura, and the plot doesn’t actually run deeper than one may fairly guess from the primary act.
Regardless of these flaws, the movie greater than makes up for it in type. It has among the handiest scares in a horror movie this yr. And Nic Cage’s unhinged efficiency, whereas threatening to swallow the character of Longlegs within the Cage persona, does grant the character such a way of surreality that it’s successfully creepy.
Longlegs makes selections that maintain it again from being the masterpiece it may very well be. Working glam rock into the soundtrack and some different scenes render sure moments nearly goofy. But it’s an unnerving movie all the identical, always leaving you off-kilter. It takes a extremely expert editor and director to drag this off, and it’s demonstrative of what Oz Perkins has to supply. Longlegs just isn’t one to overlook.
