Longlegs is from Osgood Perkins, who is writer/director. He’s the son of Anthony Perkins and those are some big shoes to fill especially in the horror genre where the elder Perkins first found himself trapped and then embraced during his latter years. Perkins might easily be remembered as “Dorky David” from Legally Blonde.
Set during the mid-1990s, Longlegs focus is on Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe who was become a go-to actress for these movies. She’s an FBI agent in the Pacific Northwest assigned to cover a case of serial killings in Oregon that result in murder-suicides. The cases involve fathers killing their family members within a week of the birthday of a 9-year-old girl on the 14th of the month.
There’s also Satanic coding left at each crime scene signed by “Longlegs.” His real name is Dale Kobble (Nicholas Cage) who looks like what would’ve happened if Tiny Tim had sex with Miss Piggy and produced a child. And I’m talking about the singer not the boy from the Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Lee gets a coded message that Longlegs may target her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt). Ruth is a very religious person and there’s hint her extreme devotion to Christianity has caused a wedge between her and Lee.
Witt does a good job with the role to the point that we don’t even realize it’s her at first. And considering that Witt is 18 years older than Monroe in real life, you get the sense that Ruth had Lee when she was still a teenager, causing her extreme religious. But the biggest problem for me is that there’s a connection with Ruth, Lee and Longlegs that kinda bogs the movie down. It seems to be the common place in many horror/thrillers nowadays for the protagonist to have some type of connection or past history with the main bad people.
And Blair Underwood is giving the thankless role as Agent Carter, Lee’s supervisor, who’s only function in the movie is to become more crucial during the climax. Roger Ebert called this the Law of Economy of Characters. This, too, has also become a major cliched trope that filmmakers need to quit doing. Scott Glenn’s Jack Crawford was used perfectly well in The Silence of the Lambs without him having to have a big twist play in the end.
As for Cage, he’s played these types of characters by now, it’s become old-hat for him. After movies like Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, you’d think he’d be choosing his roles better. To be honest, he’s not in this movie long enough to be an effective evil character, despite the movie’s title. The better role goes to Kiernan Shipka as Carrie Anne Camera, the reported only surviving member of Longlegs. She’s only in one scene while Lee interviews her at a mental hospital, but she steals the show.
Shipka along with Witt make the movie worth watching. And it shows Perkins has some talent in creating tension just with an actor’s performance. Perkins’ mother, Berry Berenson, was an actress, model and photographer, who was one of many passengers of American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. He said the movie was inspired by how Berenson hid her father’s bisexuality and illness from AIDS from the public.
But by the end of the movie, you might find yourself wondering if this could’ve been shorten. At 101 minutes with opening and end credits, it feels like it’s sluggish at moments when it should be suspenseful. I’m not going to lie, I actually gave up and fast forwarded the last 10 minutes when I realized where it was heading.
I know this movie made a lot of money at $127 million as its budget was less than $10 million, and Perkins will probably be able to have carte blanche on his next movie. But I think the underwhelming audience score compared to the praise by the critics proves that some people opinions vary. Part of me thinks that Perkins was trying to get his feet wet back in the 1990s and tried to submit this as a possible episode for The X-Files. Underworld’s name is Carter as in Chris Carter, the creator of that show.
Either the script was rejected for being too dark or just the fact that Perkins couldn’t use his father’s clout to get it made. There are moments here that shows Perkins can make a great horror/thriller. His next movie The Monkey is based on the Stephen King short story by the name and it’s scheduled to be released in late February. So, time will tell.
Will you like Longlegs? Maybe. I did get more into it than Smile 2, mainly because the performances of Monroe, Shipka and Witt kept me interested. But both movies really overstayed their welcome with me.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 