If "Silence of the Lambs" and "It" had a baby and David Lynch was its Godfather, that kid would look a lot like the killer new horror thriller, LONGLEGS.
Writer/Director Oz Perkins (son of Anthony Perkins, the legendary actor who played Norman Bates) has a sure hand, carving out a fascinating new hybrid of police procedural & horror film that never lets you relax.
Agent Lee Harker, a new FBI agent is fresh out of the academy when she shows incredible instincts that border on the clairvoyant.
Maika Monroe (so great in "It Follows") stars as Harker, creating a character so internal that when she does speak, you hang on every word.
So does her boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) who immediately assigns her talents to the case of a serial killer with a veracious appetite and mysterious control.
Entire families with nothing remarkable in their histories are being found slaughtered in their homes. There is no evidence of forced entry or anyone else being there. The families appear to have killed each other and then, themselves.
How? Why?
It's a great story hook and Perkins fills the frame with the same kind of serial killer dread I've only seen twice before, in Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" and David Fincher's "Se7en". That's high praise, and it's earned.
The killer, Longlegs, leaves symbolically encrypted "Zodiac" style letters at every crime scene. As Harker begins to decode them, she's drawn deeper and deeper into a very dark hole.
When your go to book on solving a crime is a giant book called "The Nine Circles of Hell", your discovery is not leading to a happy place.
We begin to see flashes and peaks of Longlegs, played for terror by an almost unrecognizable Nicholas Cage. We all know Cage can go over the top, but this time out, the character absolutely demands it and Cage wields Longlegs like a suit of armor, alabaster skin and wild hair flying in your face.
A visit to a mental institution to meet a young girl who survived the massacre of her family is a chance for Perkins to craft a very different kind of moment and it's one of the best in the film. In near complete silence, the tension elevates between Harker and survivor Carrie Anne (Kiernan Shipka), words are spoken and the truth begins to emerge. Monroe & Shipka are mesmerizing.
Like "Jaws", we see most of the monster at the end of the film and Cage's Longlegs owns the screen. Damn, this dude is Pennywise with worse hair. Loved it.
Monroe had never met Cage before filming their major scene together and the terror she shows is palpable. Her mic actually picked up her heartbeat as it soared to 170, the sound of which has been pumped up and inserted over some of Neon's great trailers.
Andres Arochi's camerawork is very good. He and Perkins clearly shared a vision for a thriller that never lets you feel comfortable. Every camera set up seems primed for someone or something to scare the bejeezus out of you at any moment.
Perkins never takes advantage of that with any cheap jump scares. They're all well earned.
I always admired the job that Oz's dad Anthony Perkins did in the director chair his third time out as Norman Bates in "Psycho III". It's an underrated film, loaded with real visual style and creativity.
Oz has sharpened that DNA to a razor point here, creating moments of real visual terror that I almost thought I was imagining at first.
Those eyes under the black cloak will haunt my nights.
Popping subliminal flashes under the titles like William Friedkin's Pazuzu face in "The Exorcist", this kid has the goods.
I can't wait to see what he does next. Part of me hopes he moves out of the horror genre. He's not slumming in the genre, this is a hell of a movie, but I'd love to see what else he has up his sleeve visually.
"Have you been saying your prayers?"
Theater goers waiting for a great summer horror movie have had their prayers answered. LONGLEGS is a creepy, twisted, claustrophobic thriller that pulled me in from the start. I'll give it a very solid B+ and look forward to Oz's next film.
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