Longlegs (2024)

Director Oz Perkins probes the “madness is in their heart” in an unforgettable way in this film that combines horror with FBI procedural. Most critics have pointed out the silimilarity to another great horror film, The Silence of the Lambs, in that both feature a young female FBI agent. This time our protagonist is discovered to have a more direct personal connection with a serial killer who is able to cast a spell on families in which a parent murders the other members of the family and then kills himself (I think most, if not all, were men).

FBI Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) has assigned rookie Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) to the case of a serial killer because he believes she has psychic powers. This is due to the case in which she and an older agent were approaching a house suspected of harboring a killer and Harker had told her companion that she was certain the killer was inside. The other agent had scoffed at this and took no precautions when knocking at the door. As soon as the door opens, the killer shoots him dead.

Carter and Harker’s current case involves a series of murder-suicides of families, all of whom have in common the same birthday of one of their members. Left behind at each crime scene is a letter written in code and satanic symbols, signed “Longlegs.” Harker seems very lethargic, so that when Agent Carter introduces her at his home to his wife and daughter Ruby, she barely responds. Despite this, the girl apparently likes the newcomer and invites her to her upcoming birthday party. Harker has virtually no social life, the one person she talks with regularly by phone being her mother Ruth (Alicia Witt). Each time Ruth tells her to be sure to say her prayers, adding, “Our prayers protect us from the devil”, the irony of which will become evident only by the end of the film.

Catching only glimpses of Longlegs at first, we eventually se more of him, and what a spine-tingling spectacle he is with his pasty skin and sparse hair that calls to mind an old cliché, “Death warmed over.” This is Nicolas Cage’s creepiest portrayal ever, and he makes the most of it. Turns out he is an expert dollmaker, maker of the various dolls we see, including one that Harker digs up. As she continues the investigation Harker will learn that she had met the killer when she was a child—it is the scene that opens the film. A girl, noticing a srange car parked outside, picks up her Polaroid camera and goes outside to look. Inside the car is a shadowy cloaked figure, but before she can look closer she hears a voice and turns around to go to investiage. She meets a scraggily-looking person with a whitened face.

Longlegs is captured and Harker confronts him, but he gruesomely kills himself in front of her. We sense that this for him is a release, because at one point the tormentor reveals how tormented he himself is, uttering, “Daddy! Mommy! Un-make me and save me from the hell of living!” He would have agreed with the pessimistic assertion of Quoholeth that it were bettter not to have been born.” Case closed, Agent Carter believes, but Harker tells him that there must have been an accomplice; they must keep on searching. Her superior does not agree. If only he had.

The story is far from over, the film following, we discover toward the climax, the old Faustian bargain, in this case one having such horrorific consequences that Agent Harker herself is forced to do the unspeakable. This film is not for everyone, drenched as it is in the blood of the innocent. Few such horror films have plumbed the depths of evil to which the human heart can plunge. The author of the above proverb would understand well this film, but probably warn his readers against watching it.

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Neon