Longlegs | Review
This Nicholas Cage horror-mystery is a small film that demands a big screen.
It’s rare that a film with a budget of less than $10 million will be the kind of picture that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
But Longlegs, the horror hit of the summer, is a film that demands to be seen on the big screen. That’s not just because the film’s relentless sense of dread works like gangbusters with an audience. Or because theaters are having a rough 2024 and need all the help they can get. Or because original works should be rewarded.
Longlegs demands a big-screen viewing because so much of the film’s effect depends on how writer and director Oz Perkins frames each of his shots. The opening scene plays out in a 4:3 aspect ratio, forcing the viewer to account for what is – and isn’t – in frame. Its first shot, an eerie POV shot in the front seat of a car, both implicates the viewer in the proceedings, and immediately calls attention to what visual information Perkins chooses to impart.
Throughout the film, Perkins repeatedly draws attention to his composition by framing the protagonist against negative space. Whether sitting at a desk or standing at a phone, the viewer’s eyes will be repeatedly drawn to the empty areas of the screen, to the shadows, watching for some sort of dark figure to reveal itself. On a big screen, the effect is unmissable.
That effect means that a sense of dread permeates every moment in the film, never letting the viewer relax. It helps that Nicolas Cage’s performance as the eponymous Longlegs manages to strike a delicate balance between camp and terror. His presence lingers over the film whether he’s on- or off-screen, and Perkins teases and delays the full reveal of Longlegs’s visage, giving the character a supernatural tinge that becomes more explicit as the story proceeds.
While Cage’s performance is certainly the most prominent part of the film, credit for holding the movie together must go to Maika Monroe, whose protagonist Lee Harker is on-screen for nearly every scene in the movie (and is often alone in doing so). Monroe plays Harker with an initial aloofness and reservedness that comes unraveled as she discovers more about her connections to Longlegs and the murders. That distance is key for establishing the character Perkins and Monroe build. Monroe allows the character to become more vulnerable as Harker’s world unravels. The audience needs a grounded performance to make the world believable, and Harker delivers.
What may make or break Longlegs for audiences (and what may have caused it to have a low Cinema Score, although that can be common for horror films) is just how explicit the supernatural presence becomes. We start with hints, like Harker’s preternatural intuition about the location of a murderer’s location, and by the end, are in full-fledged Satan-walks-among-us territory. How a viewer feels about this transition will govern the reaction to the third act.
But even if you don’t fully buy into the supernatural, the journey is well worth it.
“Longlegs” is now playing in theaters nationwide. Rated R for bloody violence, disturbing images and some language.