Cage in the Dark

In another year of no movies, nothing else has been hyped as quickly and successfully as Longlegs—a new horror film by Osgood Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins and supporting player in Legally Blonde. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I wouldn’t say I’m someone who likes or dislikes horror movies. I don’t see new ones. I have no interest. I’ll never see MaXXXine, I’ll never see Pearl. I saw X for reasons; it wasn’t on purpose. I don’t see contemporary things. They don’t interest me at all, and that’s not to say that they aren’t great. I’m sure they are great and make a lot of people happy, which is all that really matters. But I like the horror genre because it’s the genre that permits the most invention and it encourages the most poetry. It’s all guessing and grasping at what is essentially unknowable.” 

If only there were more poetry and invention in Longlegs! Perkins’ fourth feature treads familiar ground for anyone that’s gone to horror movies for the last 10 years: a brutal FBI investigation into a serial killer named “Longlegs” (Nicolas Cage) full of month-old corpses, sudden head shots, low wide angles. Perkins and cinematographer Andrés Arochi lock the camera down in lifeless static compositions or slow, meaningful dolly shots. You can see the camera pushing in ever so slightly at the edge of the frame and you instantly know that some bit of exposition will be doled out, or someone will flip out, or an attempt at something genuinely moving.

Longlegs has been killing entire families; Maika Monroe plays an investigator looking for him. She figures out he kills by algorithm, creating an inverted triangle fixated on birthdays and little girls. Numerology, inscrutable alphabets, tedious flashbacks, Satan—it’s all here! Where is the poetry in a retread of True Detective? The houses full of grimy plastic sheets, scary shut-ins who speak in halting riddles, traumatized children, the cycle of abuse… it’s all… so… familiar…

Perkins isn’t all cliches: his dialogue is a bit twisty, never turning purple but flaring up during a close-up monologue with one of Longlegs’ eventual victims. It reminded me of Diablo Cody. And I wish Perkins was more out there a la Cody or whoever, for better or worse. Worse would’ve been better! This is a rerun that’s just as poorly-lit as so many recent movies. Ti West’s X trilogy was inconsistent but those movies are fun, and even when they’re not they want to be fun, they are movies, and they aren’t burdened like Perkins. God knows that burden isn’t an artistic liability, but again, you’d think he’d have something more to say!

Longlegs is about parents, and the lies they tell their children in order for them to survive—I think that’s a direct quote from the movie’s press kit. But the movie’s dead on arrival, totally inert past its kickass garage rock opening, red widescreen title cards with black font, cutting to black, producing an exciting and very simple effect: your eyes adjusting made everything look green for a bit. And then it’s just trope after trope of contemporary horror movies that he so apparently loathes, and not even Cage can save it with some of his German Expressionist Kabuki acting. He has nothing to work with. Longlegs is much gorier than MaXXXine, and so much less fun—I prefer West’s pastiche over Perkins’ leftovers.

—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith