2024 was a good year for horror movies, with movie theater audiences flocking to both arthouse provocations (Substance) and series reboots (The First Omen).
But one movie in particular stands out. It is for reasons that should make us anxious.
What's frightening about Longlegs isn't his love or ways, but the sense that he's backed by supernatural forces hidden from us.
Osgood Perkins' Longlegs is one of this year's notable success stories, grossing $125 million on a budget of less than $10 million. What it lacked in marketing, it made up for in massive word-of-mouth excitement — much of which focused on Nicolas Cage's unrestrained performance as the titular agent of evil.
The encounter between “Se7en” and “Silence”
“Longlegs” is very effective, but not as original as the initial buzz suggested. The film is set in the '90s, and much has been said about its obvious borrowings from two films from that era. The unrelentingly gray and frightening atmosphere is inherited from “Se7en,'' and the tense cat-and-mouse game between a rookie female FBI agent and a mysterious serial killer is inherited from “The Silence of the Lambs.''
To these familiar elements, “Longlegs” adds another classic horror trope. Longlegs kills people on behalf of a greater supernatural evil, Satan. Still, the film does away with the usual Hollywood trappings. There are no exorcisms or grotesque physical changes. Perhaps for this reason, the film has been largely left out of the discourse surrounding our culture's growing interest in demons.
“Longlegs” revolves around an elaborate series of cases in which an entire family is murdered, including a nine-year-old girl who just so happens to be born on the 14th of that month, and somehow It is related to the character in the title.
Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is an FBI agent assigned to this case who is clairvoyant and analytical, and has had a connection to the murderer since childhood, but does not fully understand it.
Note: “Longlegs” was released in theaters in July and has been available to stream for almost three months, so the following contains spoilers.
The police are initially baffled by the seemingly random murders, but Lee is able to see through the data and recognize patterns that are diabolical in nature. This leads them down a strange path, where they discover the murderer's love of dolls, his penchant for religious imagery, and his ability to possess people and objects at the behest of his master.
hide and seek
What's frightening about Longlegs isn't his love or ways, but the sense that he's backed by supernatural forces hidden from us. Buried under excessive makeup and prosthetic legs, and playing in a completely different register than his trademark craziness, Cage's long legs seem purposefully impenetrable.
What little glimpse we get of the inner man comes literally when he slams his face into the interrogation table, crushes his nose into pulp, and praises Satan with his last breath.
This gives the film a strange religious background. Lee's mother is portrayed as very Christian, always asking her daughter if she keeps her prayers. Although Lee is clearly knowledgeable about religious issues, correcting others' factual errors and keeping religious books in his home, he does not appear to be a devout believer. She has clairvoyance, but when asked if she prays, she admits that she has never prayed.
Lee relentlessly pursues the case, but is clearly indifferent and devoid of emotion. Meanwhile, her quarry is deeply focused on his evil quest.
Longlegs commits murder by proxy, enchanting the family's patriarch into a homicidal trance, causing him to follow the killer's orders. He is a force of subversion, a creeping ability to possess good people and use them to advance evil even after the source of evil is functionally gone.
Controversially, his greatest weapon is ultimately Lee's mother, who he controls and spreads his possessive power over – completely overpowering her religious soul and turning her into a nun. Disguise her and turn her into a doll.
The story of “Longlegs'' ends up being a depressing tale of evil's omnipresent ability to extend beyond death and corrupt everything in sight. The film's dark and ambiguous ending, in which the heroes lose everything and find themselves at best in a temporary stalemate, begs the question of whether good can ever hope to defeat evil.
Is “No Country” your hope?
This bleak outlook is very reminiscent of the infamous ending of “No Country for Old Men.” There, the main character is killed off-screen before the final climax, the sheriff gives up on fighting evil, and innocent people are killed. That's only because the villain promised so.
When you listen to No Country for Old Men, you realize that the villainous Anton Chigurh is still roaming the world, fighting evil while good sits and surrenders to a cosmic reality of despair and failure. It makes me think about how we are spreading the word. “If the rules you followed brought you this result, what good are those rules?” says the villain Chigurh. (And then-Vice President-elect Vance as well).
But Chigurh is not a Satanist, he is a determinist. He has a clear philosophy. Longlegs lacks that internal complexity. He is content to become a physical conduit to spiritual evil. And that evil is ultimately stopped not by faith, but by a bullet, an act of parricide, and a daughter's betrayal that shatters her mother's hollow love for Christianity.
Unlike its close relatives like The Exorcist and The Conjuring, Longlegs lacks a clear moral compass. Rather than evil triumphing in the end, it seems like good lacks so much conviction or energy. Lee doesn't seem to understand why it's important, but goes ahead with the process. There's a sense that the evil she's fighting has long ago eaten away at her from the inside out. It's only a matter of time before she too gives up the fight.
Lee differs from Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling in one important way. That means she is as foreign to us as Longlegs. We don't root for her like Sterling. Rather, the movie itself becomes one of Longlegs' evil puppets, making Perkins's desperate visions more neutral, almost hypnotic, pleasurable.
To quote blogger Justin Bower:“In the world of Longlegs, Satan always answers prayers, but God—if there is one at all—is silently resigned and unable to resist the power of the demonic puppet master.”
By not asking us to identify with good, “Long Legs” also frees us from thinking about our own evil. Could that be the reason for its immense popularity? This culture is so resigned to decline that all it can do is enjoy the ride.
