If you've followed my Letterboxd for a while you'll know that I'm a big fan of Osgood Perkins. Son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins and supporting star of Legally Blonde, Perkins has made a name for himself in recent years with visually stunning but overall divisive work in the horror genre. His debut feature The Blackcoat's Daughter is in my opinion one of the most underrated horror movies of recent memory, his follow up I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House didn't reach those heights but still offered an interesting watch, and his take on the classic tale Gretel & Hansel is a visual feast with a terrific score. Despite my opinions on those three, the general consensus has been pretty mixed, but Perkins is back with Longlegs, a 90s set serial killer film that has thus far received near universal praise.
Longlegs follows Lee Harker, a young FBI agent whose intense ability to sense clues puts her in pursuit of a decades-active serial killer. She finds herself thrown into a twisted web of murder and the occult, trying tirelessly to put a stop to the killer before more families find themselves victim.
This movie pretty much wowed me. I'm going to put it out there right now, this isn't the "scariest movie ever" that a lot of the buzz is making it out to be. Some won't even find it scary, Perkins is working here with a sense of unease rather than explicit fear which I found very effective. Throughout the runtime I found myself more scared of what he could show than what he was showing and that ability to create a sense of fearful anticipation is something I really appreciate in a horror movie. There are certainly moments of gore and more traditional scares, but overall it's the bleak tone of the film that gets under the skin and lingers with you. I can't speak to everyone else but to me this felt like a nightmare that I didn't want to leave. I was uncomfortable and unsettled but Perkins crafts something so fascinating narratively and visually enticing that I truly didn't want it to end despite its ability to get under the skin.
Maika Monroe plays the lead Lee Harker, bringing with her a pretty solid resume in the horror genre. She starred in 2022's Watcher, 2014's The Guest, but most notably the leading role in the breakout hit It Follows. That was arguably the best horror film that year and now a decade later she leads what will likely be the standout of 2024. I hope people give her performance here credit, I worry that the quietness she has early on will cause some to write her off, but man is this a great performance. From the get go her character feels scared and somehow broken and that only adds to the unsettling nature of the film as a whole. The main mystery of the film is trying to catch the killer but unravelling Lee as a character is just as gripping, and a lot of that is thanks to Monroe's performance. Nicolas Cage also needs a shoutout. He isn't in the film quite as much as I expected but he is perhaps at his most frightening. There's something so unhinged about his performance here that just works with the film and that anticipatory fear I mentioned before is constantly present when Cage is on screen.
Following the vein of Perkins previous work, this is visually and sonically about as good as you can get with a horror movie. The cinematography here is some of the best of the year even outside of the horror genre. Different aspect ratios are used pretty flawlessly to bounce between the past and present, but no matter the ratio Perkins and DP Andres Arochi fill the frame with perfectly composed imagery. From start to finish this just looks terrific despite the grainy grit to it, and the way the film is cut together only helps in creating a terrific overall look. If you made the mistake of calling that phone number the marketing team promoted you'll have an idea of what some of the sound design is like, but in case you didn't dial those cursed numbers let me tell you this movie has a freaky sound to it. There's a bit of grain to put us more in the times, but there's also so many sounds throughout that just make your skin crawl, once again adding to that unsettling nature of the film.
One area I could see some negative reception and understand is that there's a pretty exposition heavy scene towards a later point in the film. Without giving anything away though, I found that the way this exposition was delivered fit within the vibe the film was going for and because of that it worked for me. Aside from that, some people will definitely just think it's too weird or moves too slow and if that causes it to not work for you I can't argue that. To me though this is exactly what I wanted, a crime horror dripping in dread and bleakness with some of the best craft we'll get this year. I'm glad to see Perkins finally getting the credit he deserves and I can't wait to see what he does next.
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