I Saw Longlegs! Movies Are Back!

The first time I went the movies after lockdown, it was to see the latest film by a horror director I already knew could bring the noise. The second time I went to the movies after lockdown, it was to see the latest film by a horror director I already knew could bring the noise. The first was Jordan Peele’s Nope in the summer of 2022. The second was Longlegs, last week.

Though I was undeniably disappointed by Nope, I wouldn’t blame it entirely for how long it took for me to indulge the theatrical experience again. While Peele could have been less indulgent and clumsy with character motivation, it’s not his fault my desire to mask meant curbing my desire for popcorn. Or that TV screens are at an acceptable shape and size for appreciate cinematic glory. Or that most interesting movies are on streaming more than fast enough for this dad. Or that the smile of Maria Menounos isn’t reward enough for sitting through ads for cars and sodas.

Similarly, a new Oz Perkins movie isn’t the reason my fear of COVID exposure has decreased to the point where I was willing to risk eating popcorn in a spacious cinema with plenty of reclining seats on a weeknight (I did pass on an opportunity to see it the opening Friday). And it’s a coincidence I’ve discovered a local theater chain, Harkins, with cozy seats and a refreshing lack of ads. Also I had a date. The stars had aligned in Longlegs’ favor.

It’s not like I wasn’t still a little skittish, and not just about chomping popcorn in a room with strangers for north of 90 minutes. I dreaded hype, too. Perkins’ Gretel & Hansel was ignored because it was a retelling of a familiar fairytale with a PG-13 rating, starring the girl from that take-the-money-and-run cultural anticlimax It. Horror enthusiasts couldn’t have known that the MPAA did parents dirty in an old-school, Return To Oz and Paperhouse, way. This shadow-filled stream of unpredictable gothic horror was loaded with bile and other viscous liquids, just never the red stuff. And somehow, the MPAA only cares about the red stuff. Jump scares, supernatural grotesquerie, ominous references to the occult and witchcraft…totally fine for the MCU crowd, as long you puke bugs and black ooze instead of red, red blood. That’s how the MPAA felt when Sam Raimi made Drag Me To Hell, and apparently how they still feel today. 

Sadly, Gretel's distributor hasn’t yet parked the product on a subscription streaming site, so I can’t demand you get thee to a Hulu immediately. You can see 2016’s I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House on Netflix, and learn that Oz Perkins is a director of remarkable patience. 2015’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter has also hopped around the sites, and may have been seen by those not above watching Emma Roberts movies. That one establishes his taste for confusion about the nature of occult horror, drawing out the possibility that magic is just magical thinking. They’re both enjoyable, though lacking the Grand Guignol delirium of Gretel & Hansel. That third effort was a major step up in ambition and showmanship, and early buzz about his fourth, Longlegs, being a harrowing exploration of satanic darkness, made sense accordingly.

Still…still, still, still…a serial killer movie? With Nic Cage and Maika Monroe? Kinda basic, right? Right down the A24 middle? Or in this case, Neon trying to get that A24 crossover shine? Though even if Perkins was consciously aiming for more arthouse attention than he got for Gretel, that doesn’t mean the movie wouldn’t be fun. I’ve never not liked Monroe in one of her many final girl appearances. And while I go back and forth on whether Mandy might have been improved by a lead capable of more nuance, I didn’t not enjoy Cage flaring his nostrils throughout that one. Mister “Western Kabuki” might render his movies one-dimensional, but it’s a hell of a dimension. So I rolled the dice, aware a bummer was thoroughly possible.

And I wasn’t bummed! Perkins certainly brought the noise in Longlegs, going to great lengths to make scenes feel fresh despite the familiarity of the plot. Every time he went into a room more than once, it was from a slightly different angle. Overhead shot from behind when the character works late, shot from the front when they wake up. Leave the door open, so we can see the longest hallway in FBI history behind them while they talk. Dude’s not above filming a scene upside down if it would otherwise be too similar to an earlier one. It’s a greatly appreciated effort when the movie is about a young female FBI agent who might be too close to the case of a really, really, really evil serial killer. The evilest yet! Like, ridiculous hair and extreme verbal affectations evil! So evil and insane I might have been distracted by how much Nicolas Cage resembled Dave Foley as Jerry Sizzler of the Sizzler Sisters on Kids In The Hall! I even might have wondered if the movie would wind up with same plot as that sketch where one Jerry Sizzler has started taking meds and the other is begging them to come back to crazytown!

As absurd as Cage’s performance is in terms of “how does he get through one meal at Denny’s without someone calling the cops?”, his character (and the movie!) actually manages to become more disturbing as the film goes on, helped by a make-up job that keeps the actor from looking like his all-too-familiar self. The movie turns out to be less about the threat of uncompromising, obscene evil anyway, but the horror of coming to a compromise with it.

I’m curious if that message becomes clearer on second viewing, because - for all the brilliant long takes and long shots - Longlegs was pretty sloppy in terms of character. Maika Monroe plays somewhat against type, trading her familiar blonde reserves of capability for ragged, reddish-brown neurosis. Sometimes her character seems meant to be on the spectrum (consider her hilariously awkward experience with her supervisor’s daughter). Other times she seems to be channeling Holly Hunter. There’s a remarkably sensitive phone conversation between her and her mother - the kind of quiet, familiar check-in between women I’ve rarely seen on screen. But when they finally get in a room together, you'd think they hadn't talked in years. For a movie with labored third act exposition worthy of the director’s dad’s most famous role, the relationship between these women could have used a little more clarity. Yes, there’s a shared traumatic experience from decades earlier they need to unpack, but they’ve seen each other more days than not since then, a detail that seems to come and go depending on the need for them to seem estranged.

But again, these aspects might cohere more on a second viewing, where I’m not too busy boggling at the camerawork or lightly let down by demon ex machina. Make no mistake: Longlegs is overhyped. It’s very possible that film festivalgoers nuts about Nic Cage had never knowingly seen an Oz Perkins movie before, least of all Gretel + Hansel, and therefore weren’t prepared for what Perkins has proven himself capable of in terms of twists and terror. Longlegs is less the arrival of a bold new voice in horror, than a voice proving his box office potential. His next movie, a Stephen King adaptation produced by James Wan, comes out in February, with some stud from the Divergent movies playing twins. It’s not impossible I’ll see that in theaters too! At the very least, I'm sure it's gonna look great. But no promises. It might be on Prime a month later.