Watched this just after finishing Oddity so I was properly set up to be spooked. The first part and a half of Longlegs builds tension well and establishes a strong style and tone. The mix of gritty 90s detective thriller and subtle occult devilry works.
Then Nic Cage as Longlegs spends more than a few seconds on screen and it quickly becomes a mess. Cage is doing his thing with what he was given, so I can't blame his performance too much. But dang Longlegs is a poorly designed character that really brings you out of the tone and atmosphere from the rest of the film.
Great watching this as a double feature with Oddity though because their similarities work to elevate each movie. Strong characters attempting to check evil, and of course creepy cursed dolls. Where Oddity is slow, deliberate, and quiet in creating a blanket of fear, Longlegs is in your face, loud, and at points it lacks a necessary subtlety.
Ending is a little underwhelming and predictable, but everything up until then is top notch! Creepy AF, great performances from Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage, and sharp direction from Oz Perkins.
Beautiful cinematography, great performances by Nic Cage and Maika Monroe,probably would deserve 10 15 additional minutes, ends a little bit abruptly but leaves a little crack on the door for a possible sequel
At the crossroads between Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files, Longlegs is much less opaque than (though perhaps as weird as) Osgood Perkins' past work. It takes the tack many horror films have been taking of late and that's the "throwback", setting stories in certain eras where its brand of horror was in vogue. So there's a Satanic vibe in his one, and therefore crimes going back to the 70s, but we're following a female FBI agent who is tracking a serial killer in the 90s. She appears to be psychic, there's an occult element to the murders, and the film is shot in Canada-playing-the-U.S. (the rural architecture alone is a giveaway for Canucks), so you're kind of wondering where Mulder and Scully are during all this, but it's definitely one of those serial killer thriller-horror flicks from the latter decade. I might soon get tired of throwbacks, but not yet. Longlegs has a strong mystery, a good anxious performance by Maika Monroe, a weird one from Nicolas Cage, and a solution you don't see coming, but makes perfect sense given the information we're given. Where the 70s-90s mix may set uneasy is the lack of full resolution, which is a horror trope, where the police thriller would include a more definitive epilogue. But it's not like I'll ever need another scene with someone sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance...
I’ve never played a character like this before, and for awhile I didn’t know how I would do it. I got wrapped up in the character name, Longlegs. I needed inspiration, so I started thinking about the man in movie history with the best legs, Fred Astaire. Then I watched a bunch of Astaire movies, and right in the middle of Swing Time, I figured it out. There’s a song-and-dance number in there called Bojangles of Harlem. If you don’t know it, go look it up. When Fred first appears onstage, he’s kitted out with these massive fake legs that are maybe 30 feet long. Those are some long legs! And that really made me think. What would that be like, to have such gargantuan, freakish legs? Wouldn’t that be horrifying? Horrifying enough to become Longlegs himself.
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Comments 1 - 9 of 9
Tidorith
Cthulhu1
I was really disappointed by this. It felt predictable, and honestly lazy... And the endlessly sloppy police work had me shaking my head.mcmakattack
Watched this just after finishing Oddity so I was properly set up to be spooked. The first part and a half of Longlegs builds tension well and establishes a strong style and tone. The mix of gritty 90s detective thriller and subtle occult devilry works.Then Nic Cage as Longlegs spends more than a few seconds on screen and it quickly becomes a mess. Cage is doing his thing with what he was given, so I can't blame his performance too much. But dang Longlegs is a poorly designed character that really brings you out of the tone and atmosphere from the rest of the film.
Great watching this as a double feature with Oddity though because their similarities work to elevate each movie. Strong characters attempting to check evil, and of course creepy cursed dolls. Where Oddity is slow, deliberate, and quiet in creating a blanket of fear, Longlegs is in your face, loud, and at points it lacks a necessary subtlety.
BLJNBrouwer
"I'm sorry, it seems I wore my long legs today. What happens if I just..."Extremely unsettling opening scene! Bravo
americanadian25
Ending is a little underwhelming and predictable, but everything up until then is top notch! Creepy AF, great performances from Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage, and sharp direction from Oz Perkins.jose_cardoso90
Beautiful cinematography, great performances by Nic Cage and Maika Monroe,probably would deserve 10 15 additional minutes, ends a little bit abruptly but leaves a little crack on the door for a possible sequelSiskoid
At the crossroads between Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files, Longlegs is much less opaque than (though perhaps as weird as) Osgood Perkins' past work. It takes the tack many horror films have been taking of late and that's the "throwback", setting stories in certain eras where its brand of horror was in vogue. So there's a Satanic vibe in his one, and therefore crimes going back to the 70s, but we're following a female FBI agent who is tracking a serial killer in the 90s. She appears to be psychic, there's an occult element to the murders, and the film is shot in Canada-playing-the-U.S. (the rural architecture alone is a giveaway for Canucks), so you're kind of wondering where Mulder and Scully are during all this, but it's definitely one of those serial killer thriller-horror flicks from the latter decade. I might soon get tired of throwbacks, but not yet. Longlegs has a strong mystery, a good anxious performance by Maika Monroe, a weird one from Nicolas Cage, and a solution you don't see coming, but makes perfect sense given the information we're given. Where the 70s-90s mix may set uneasy is the lack of full resolution, which is a horror trope, where the police thriller would include a more definitive epilogue. But it's not like I'll ever need another scene with someone sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance...nowhereman136
Add this to the long list of fantastic Nic Cage roles7/10
Blocho