54607: Longlegs

The 1990s were a good time for the fictional FBI. For a while, it was cool and sexy to be a Feeb. Clarice Starling chased Buffalo Bob, Dale Cooper wrestled with his own Killer BOB, and through it all, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigated whatever cryptid or conspiracy happened to pop up that week. It was a weird and exciting time to be a Fed. But investigations in the real world were, if possible, weirder and messier. White nationalist militias sprang up all over, people started hoarding guns for the end of days, and things were just not nearly as wryly witty or sexually charged as the will-they-won't-they-get-abducted energy of the X-Files.

As weird as the real 90s were, however, Longlegs is logarithmically stranger. Writer/director Oz Perkins has written a (coded) love letter to the FBI of the fictional past that mixes up everything chilling and creepy and unsettling of the Clinton/Reno era, and turned out a terrifying, engrossing film that rests comfortable among the best of this particular corpus. (I know "canon" is probably more apt, but I just can't help myself)

In Longlegs, we follow Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), as she is plucked from the rank-and-file of the agency by a senior agent, Carter (Blair Underwood), and put on the trail of a years-long string of family annihilation crimes, all suspected to be the work of one mastermind. This sounds familiar, right? I mean, it sounds practically generic at this point: Newbie agent brought up to the big leagues, possibly in over her head, chasing an inscrutable, brutal killer who leaves behind almost no clues, aside from letters written in an unbreakable cipher. It could be Manhunter, or a Point Break sequel, but Longlegs is full of left turns. Longlegs is its own thing, tethered to the conventions of the genre but still straining against them as it tells its story.

Here's what I will tell you: Longlegs is a well-made psychological horror film, and much like Perkins' earlier film, The Blackcoat's Daughter, this movie is preoccupied with the destruction of the family. Longlegs delivers on its promise as a horror film. It is, at times, stultifying in the atmosphere it creates, with Harker surrounded by darkness, beset by paranoia, and left to slouch toward madness with neither a Scully nor a Mulder as a partner to help guard her sanity. In one terrific sequence early in the film, Harker is stalked one night by something while home alone in her woodland cabin (standard issue for Feds, I assume). It is a genuinely disturbing sequence, similar to recent scenes from Oddity and—sigh—The Strangers: Chapter One. This trope will always get me, and Perkins and Monroe pull it off expertly here. In another sequence, Harker lays out all the clues, literally, on the floor to start making connections, as we expect to see in serial killer movies. But Perkins has a different goal with this scene, as the camera (masterfully wielded by cinematographer Andres Arochi) frames her alone on a deep red carpet, surrounded by bloody photos, with the murky, unlit ceiling pushing the light out of the scene. We make the connection here, not Harker, and we see the bigger picture: that she is absolutely going to be overwhelmed by the blood and darkness to come.

The filmmakers also make nods to Silence of the Lambs. Some are sly, such as a poster illustrating the lifecycle of butterflies. Some nods are more obvious, as when Harker breaks into a storage area in search of overlooked clues, and the misdirect regarding the location of the killer's basement hideout. Then there's the absolute crowning jewel of anti-subtlety, when Nicolas Cage turns "Happy Birthday" into this generation's "Goodbye Horses."

Speaking of Mr. Cage, his performance as the eponymous Longlegs is incredible. His physical and vocal transformation is complete, and he is utterly unrecognizable in this role. The performance he turns in is... well, it's not something a young actor would or necessarily should do. This is the kind of performance that would be seen as career-definingly weird for any actor not named "Nicolas Cage." It's hard to describe what makes it work, exactly. The closest I can say is that he's a walking jump scare. Longlegs, the character, is an unexploded bomb, and every second brings another opportunity for it to blow up in your face.

Also turning in a haunting performance is Alicia Witt, as Agent Harker's possibly deranged mother, Ruth. In much the same way that killers behind a mask are menacing because there's no way to read them, to see what's going on behind their eyes, Ruth's emotions and motivations are similarly masked. She seems to operate on a parallel reality from the rest of the narrative, in a dreamlike, unengaged state. And though the truth of her story, as well as its intersection with the main narrative, becomes clear at the end, there is still something menacing in her distant pain.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough for anyone with a taste for horror. The story is familiar but fresh enough to feel different, nostalgic yet critical of its origins, with gripping performances from the small cast and enough moments of visual, auditory, and emotional terror to ensure that Longlegs stays with you long after the credits roll.