Longlegs: Creepy Crawly

In 1990s Oregon, FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) shows signs of clairvoyance and is assigned by her supervisor, Carter (Blair Underwood), to a dead-end case involving murder-suicides where a family member kills everyone and then themselves, but at each scene a note is left in satanic code and signed “Longlegs”.  The handwriting on the note does not belong to any of the family members and no other physical evidence exists that anyone other than the family was in the house. So who is writing the notes and how are they making loved ones turn on each other. Each family also had a daughter who was born on the 14^th of the month and each killing happened within six days, before or after, of the daughter’s birthday.  Lee finds a pattern which draws the shape of a satanic symbol with one point still missing.  Through the investigation Lee begins to have visions or possibly memories of something that happened to her just before her 9^th birthday, which was on the 14^th of January.  Carter asks Lee to find out from her mother what happened on her 9^th birthday, but her mother is reluctant, but Lee finds another clue.  Can Lee and Carter find Longlegs and his accomplice before they complete the Satanic symbol, and a 13^th family is murdered?  Watch and find out!

Longlegs is a 2024 horror film written and directed by Osgood Perkins.  The film was distributed by Neon and released on July 12, 2024.  The film opened to critical acclaim with most reviews being positive.  J. Hurtado of Screen Anarchy says the film is “a masterpiece; an unholy, horrifying confluence of high art and anxiety, a film which every frame is a nightmare, and it’s beautiful”. Bloody Degusting’s Meagan Navarro praises the films atmosphere and says, “Longlegs is as stylish as it is timeless, dripping with claustrophobic dread and rot”.  And Bill Bria of /Film called the movie “The most terrifying horror movie of 2024”.  The audience polls were positive but not to the same degree with audiences polled by CinemaScore giving it a C+ rating and the polls from PostTrak seeing it receive a 70% overall rating.  As of July 31, 2024, the film has grossed $74.4 million worldwide.

The movie has a very creepy atmosphere, and the horror does not come from jump scares or flashy special effects, but from the psychological aspects of the characters.  The absence of sound or music in some scenes adds to the overall vibe and there is something that is just unsettling about the way the film was shot, the imagery and the performances.  Maika Monroe, I felt gave a great performance, but I know some others do not agree.  She exemplifies a woman who grew up secluded and out of touch with society.  There are times that she smiles, and in those moments, she looks normal, but for most of the movie she has a melancholy distant look.  I thought this fit the character well. Where Maika’s performance is reserved and understated, Nicolas Cage who plays Longlegs, is over the top.  There are times he is creepy, and the performance is entertaining, but I would have found a more subtle approach to be a lot more disarming.  Nicolas Cage does crazy well, but he also goes a bit too far.  I found the story interesting and the way it unfolded well plotted.  There are some twists and turns but there is a bit of foreshadowing that made some of the plot predictable. One thing I am confused over is the title of the movie.  The “longlegs” character isn’t overly tall or have abnormally long legs.  There are no references to spiders that I saw.  So why is the film or the character given that nomenclature. Overall Osgood Perkins, put together a well-conceived movie that was interesting, atmospheric, creepy, and a bit unsettling.  He gave us a police procedural horror film that still felt fresh and different.