'Longlegs' movie review: Chilling visuals but lacking in scares

Still from Longlegs

Film: Longlegs
Cast: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Lauren Acala, Kiernan Shipka
Director: Osgood Perkins
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 101 min.

Director Osgood Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins (of ‘Psycho' fame) and model/actress Berry Berenson,(who perished in the first plane to hit the World Trade Center), gave up a fledgling acting career ( the 1983 remake ‘Psycho' & ‘Legally Blonde'), and since, has been steadily rising up in the ranks directing original introspective horror movies ("The Blackcoat's Daughter","I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House","Gretel & Hansel"). His latest, "LongLegs" has been accumulating hype ever since its first trailer was launched several months ago. So is the rather unprecedented hype for a shoestring budget horror film warranted

The trailer was alluring enough for horror fans waiting to see something different… but the film does not live up to the hype. Firstly, this is not exactly a horror film. It's more of a FBI procedural in search of a serial killer connected with a satanic cult. The film stars Maika Monroe as Lee Harker a tortured, newly inducted FBI agent assigned to trail the Satan-worshipping serial killer, Longlegs played by Nicolas Cage, unrecognisable in face changing prosthetics and several inches of pancake.

The script is the real problem here. The characters don't come across as well-developed, making it difficult to empathize with them. Its year 2000, Lee and her partner Agent Fisk (Dakota Daulby) are on their first day out in the field and the next moment you see Fisk being shot in the chest.

Having a newbie FBI agent trailing a serial killer who happens to be mysterious as well as vicious shows up the FBI in a bad light - Particularly when she seems untrained and terribly inept at her job. Physically, She appears to be the slowest moving FBI agent on the planet. Lee is given to anxiety attacks that put her partners at risk and this element brings into question the FBI's psychological profiling used to whet their own recruits. It would have been better if the script had presented her as an ‘occult' consultant called upon to assist in the case. Her history which unravels towards the climax also raises more questions. Even Longlegs' origins are shrouded in mystery and Cage who appears on screen for very brief spells has little to do other than scream. But that said, even with such unacceptable make-believe, Osgood manages to make the narrative quite chilling. The tech-specs and creative aesthetics are certainly commendable here.

The narrative premise intrigues. Just imagine a mysterious figure with unnaturally long legs terrorizing a small town in Pacific Northwest with a series of murders that remain unsolved for decades? For this the framing has to be perfect. The prologue unfolds a day before the ninth birthday of a young girl. We see the scene in 4:3 aspect ratio. Yet the so called ‘Long Legs' don't register. The long-legged antagonist as a concept is interesting enough but in the cinematic idiom, it's a failure. The special effects and design leave a lot to be desired. The music by Zilgi seems inspired by ‘The Shining' and uninspired sound design by Eugenio Battaglia also fail to assist in augmenting tension. The atmospherics also feel rather incomplete.

What Osgood does best is create mystery and play on doubt. Lee is shown as a tense, lonesome personality who keeps all her emotions and thoughts bottled up. It's a convenient construct that helps hold up a ‘reveal' that is crucial to this telling. The investigation becomes more complicated with Lee showing signs of intuitive abilities that help uncover evidence leading up to occult connections. Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), her Boss, is surprised to see this sudden flow of revelations but before Harker can pinpoint the connections to her own childhood, the number of killings increase considerably. Her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt), is shown as deeply religious and their relationship though loving, seems at odds, largely.

This serial killer mystery shrouded in dark magic has it's shocking moments. But they never amount to anything horrifying. The choppy narrative doesn't allow for total involvement even when ensnared by the visual aesthetics. The cinematography ennobles the chill factor and the deliberate pacing allows for some amount of tension to creep in. The reliance on cliché moments to shore up the scares fails to come good. Andrés Arochi's camera work - variety of frames, cold, dark, creepy and crisp visuals, repetitive wide-angle shots, subdued color palette help create some unease. Despite the fault lines, this film still manages to be a darkly disturbing experience. It's just not creepy or scary enough to warrant a ‘horror film' tag.