“All right, kids. This is the part where you get to do the things the grownups don’t wanna do anymore. Door to door on foot. Knock-knock, ‘have you seen this man?’ Just like in the movies. Partners have already been assigned so no one will get hurt feelings. Suspect likes to visit a certain kind of neighborhood. He’s a middle-aged Caucasian male and not likely to go quietly, so let’s always assume he’s armed. We’ll go alert and careful. That’s all.”
But that’s really just the beginning. Writer/director Osgood Perkins has created one of those serial killer films that is bound to draw comparisons with some of the best of those films and most certainly Silence Of The Lambs. Let me just get that out of the way fast. This is a pretty solid film that deserves some attention, and is absolutely worth a look. It isn’t anywhere as good as Silence Of The Lambs, and that appears to bother some folks. I’m not one who thinks if you can’t make a classic that stands up to the best ever, you shouldn’t be making movies. It’s not as good, and I’m very OK about that. Longlegs has its moments, to be sure.
“These are things that little girls should never know.”
Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe is a young FBI agent and one of a roomful of agents listening to the above instructions. She gets her partner and within a few hours knows where the bad guy is, and the result is one of both triumph and tragedy. It turns out she has a kind of ESP thing going for her, so she is recruited to another part of the agency where she is both partnered with and supervised by Blair Underwood’s Agent Carter. He’s on the trail of a pretty freaky killer who calls himself Longlegs. Before long the killer starts to contact her with coded messages, and all of it starts to kindle memories that might mean she has had a close connection to the killer since she was a child.
“The seventh she to be given the same choice they’ve all been given. Crimson, or clover. Accept the gift and destroy, destroy yourself and yourselves. Or keep it. And bow down. Bow all the way down. And get right down to the dirty, dirty work. Work that gets dirty as it cleans. Like a mop. Like a rag.”
The film stays away from technology that might date it all. I know it takes place sometime in the 90’s because the FBI office has a photo of Bill Clinton on the walls. There are no cell phones or other computer devices here, so the film stays rooted in the atmosphere created by the circumstances, and Nicolas Cage takes full advantage of the fact he isn’t even recognizable behind the makeup of Longlegs, and it obviously gives him the freedom to fully embrace this dark, twisted nature. It’s not the kind of regal and nuanced performance you get from Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, but the performance does have its moments. Unlike the typical serial killer genre, the horror element here can’t be ignored. There is a rather nuanced paranormal aspect to the killer who might be able to enter people’s minds. Maybe the best description is Freddy Kruger meets Hannibal.
Maika Monroe as Lee is interesting at first, but she can’t really carry the film the way the character needs to. Cage is not in the film near as much, but drives the narrative, perhaps too strongly. There’s a side arc where Lee is trying to deal with the emotional baggage of her mother who might be just as much a monster as Longlegs himself. These moments pick up the interest, and Monroe is able to shine, because she has pretty good chemistry with Alicia Witt as her mother, Ruth.
The overall film is shot quite warmly, so there are a lot of oranges and yellows in the lighting, and there are times I really loved the fact that this was shot mostly on 35mm film, although I suspect not all of it was. There is a slight grain here that helps add an organic nature to the atmosphere of the film. I’m encouraged that young filmmakers are still considering the use of film, particularly as high-end digital cameras are getting both less expensive and much smaller and easier to manipulate. Like vinyl records, film might be making a comeback. “I’ll be waiting.”
