Rating: R | Runtime: 101 minutes
Release Date: July 12th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Neon
Director(s): Osgood Perkins
Writer(s): Osgood Perkins

Not nice things.

It felt like a tap on the shoulder. That’s how Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) described the gut instinct to know a murderer was inside the house across from the one her partner was canvassing. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) jokes that she’s clairvoyant. Lee simply brushes it off with her unwavering stoicism as a thing that just “happens sometimes.” Whatever the cause or intention, the Bureau isn’t about to let the possibility of an ace up their sleeve go to waste. So, despite her lack of experience, they assign her the most high-profile cold case they’ve got. And the moment she starts digging in is the moment he kills again.

Osgood Perkins labels the film the same way he does the man: Longlegs. Stemming from a creepy prologue wherein the pale serial killer (played by Nicolas Cage) accosts a young girl by crouching down right after saying he “left his long legs on,” the cryptically absurd nature of the joke and the Longlegs look is a feature that intentionally toes the line between disturbing and farce. So does the robotic nature of Harker’s introverted obsessive with zero interpersonal skills. Both teeter towards over-the-top on their respective ends of the spectrum with Cage singing his demands like a nursery rhyme and Monroe looking as though she’s clenching her jaw to hold back an aneurysm.

The question for us to think about is how these two figures are connected since he seems to know her very well. Not in a cat and mouse chase kind of way, but a “welcome back” to my sphere kind of way. Because Longlegs has been getting away with it for years. He’s so good that no one would ever have suspected his crime scenes were connected if he didn’t leave cyphered notes with his name on them. Each one is a family and the forensic evidence all points to murder suicide inside the houses with weapons they own and no signs of anyone else being present. So, the decision to literally give Lee the key to everything seems less like a surrender than a smile. It’s as if he’s been waiting for her.

Longlegs proves an interesting beast as a result because it unfolds like a serial killer movie despite not really being a serial killer movie. The draw is Lee hunting for this monster and the wild discoveries made along the way, but nothing that happens is truly a result of police work. Everything is orchestrated to the smallest detail—so much so that even the good things feel wrong because we’ve been trained to believe they’re means to a new nightmarish end. This fact adds a ton of suspense and intrigue in the moment, but a lot of it begins to fall apart the more you think in hindsight. Don’t therefore think too much when the screen cuts to black. As more strings reveal themselves, the greater chance of you wondering if there was a point.

Not that there needs to be a point. I’m a glutton for taut storytelling and eccentric characters regardless of how they come together too. But it’s tough to move from very good and entertaining to masterpiece without there being a bit more meat on the bones. Perkins sort of hedges his bets in a way that undercuts the police thrills with horror just as he undercuts the horror with those same police thrills. It can’t be a great version of either if the other prevents it from moving beyond pure mood. Longlegs is scarier as a man than he is a monster and the case is more captivating as a crime than it is a ritual. I had a blast, but I do wonder how much better it could be if Perkins picked a lane. Alicia Witt and Kiernan Shipka’s effective supporting turns might not feel so wasted.

I can’t be too disappointed, though. Not when you get Cage going full-on Cage (especially those non sequitur moments adding nothing but color) and Monroe conducting parallel investigations into his killer and her own past. The composition of the prologue adding to Longlegs’ introduction is worth admission alone by really putting us into the shoes of a young girl—his main targets. And while both lose some luster in the expository dump of meaning that connects them to a much bigger picture, all the “Mr. Downstairs” and doll stuff is very cool mythologizing on their own when still in context with a deranged lunatic’s deeds. It all adds up to a more than solid genre flick I didn’t love but can definitely see why so many do.

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Maika Monroe in LONGLEGS; courtesy of Neon.