Director – Osgood Perkins (The Twilight Zone, Gretel and Hansel)
Starring – Maika Monroe (It Follows, The 5th Wave), Nicolas Cage (Mandy, Renfield), and Blair Underwood (Dear White People, Ironside)
Release Date – 2024
Rating – 4/5
Nic Cage has been one of my favorite actors for many years. I grew up on his classics like Face/Off, Con Air, Once Bitten, Raising Arizona, and so on. While he did hit a bit of a dry spell with the Left Behind films along with the two Ghostrider movies, he seems to have found his second wind with the smaller budget films like Mandy, Color Out of Space, Willy’s Wonderland, and the recent hit Longlongs.
I heard a lot about Longlegs and how it was written and directed by Osgood Perkins but I had no idea Cage was attached. I ordered the UHD release of the film and when it arrived I saw his name attached to it. That made me immediately move the film to the top of my watch list.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows an young agent who is working on a case where young kids were murdered and strange occurrences happened inside the home. When she starts to uncover a pattern she realizes that the person responsible for the deaths is connected to another crime where an entire family was murdered. The revelation of the killer leads her to her family home and a dark secret her mother has been hiding for decades. **Spoiler Alert**
Longlegs is one of the genre films that immediately became a hit among horror fans. I heard so much about the film to the point that I almost skipped it. Movies that are typically hyped up by pop horror fans tend to be underwhelming to me. However, after getting the film in for my collection and seeing it featured Nic Cage I knew I had to check it out. I’m glad I did because it was one of the better films of the year and probably one of my favorite performances from Cage to date.
The acting in this one is absolutely amazing. Monro and Underwood are fantastic. They really do hold their scenes and the characters they bring to life make the movie. Also, they work so well together and their on screen dynamic really shows how talented they really are. With that being said, Cage makes the film what it is. He’s absolutely unhinged in this movie and damn near unrecognizable. I’ve seen damn near everyone of his films to date and this was the first time he gave me goosebumps. I couldn’t see this film having the same impact if someone else had took on the role of Longlegs.
The story for this one is a bit of a stretch but I enjoyed it for the most part. I loved the gritty true crime aspect. It reminded me a lot of Se7en and Kodiak which are two of the most underrated films of all time. We then get the Satanic aspect that I absolutely love. I grew up during the Satanic Panic of the late 80s and early 90s and love seeing this incorporated into true crime films. With that being said, the film does hit the paranormal on it’s final stretch which does throw the movie off some but not enough to ruin it. If the film was going to go that route I wish it would have embraced it from the beginning instead of just dipping it’s toes in it during the last stretch of the film.
Finally, this is not a gruesome film. We do get some blood and great make-up effects on Cage but the main focus of the film is the characters and rich story. Overall, Longlegs is another fantastic pop horror film that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did. This is going to be a genre film that fans will remember for many years to come. I urge anyone that is on the fence about this one to give it a go. You will not be disappointed.
