Director: Osgood Perkins
Cast: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby
Rating: (R16)
★★★★
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
Nauseatingly terrifying yet paradoxically hypnotising, Osgood Perkins’ satanic thriller Longlegs is a must-see. Gut-wrenching, goosebump-raising, and spine-tingling, reuniting procedural thriller with monstrous horror while weaving in satanic elements to create the most viscerally disturbing experience I’ve had in theatres in years.
Stylistically, it’s colourfully vibrant, and narratively, it’s thrillingly cryptic. Longlegs maintains an unnerving ambience that quickly turns diabolical as the well-conceived plot frighteningly unravels. Additionally, it boasts a cinematic uniqueness that is utterly captivating, and an encouraging sign for its director’s future.
Maika Monroe returns to the genre that burst her onto the scene as the talented young FBI agent, Lee Harker, with a sinister and seemingly intuitive psychic power.
Opposite Monroe is Nick Cage as the abhorrent and depraved antagonist, Longlegs himself, with an appropriately disturbed look to fit the part. He occupies a role central to the horror-thriller genre, echoing the notorious Zodiac killer with puzzles and codes teasing his inevitable horrifying plan.
The film delivers everything you’d want from a genre movie: a captivating script, intricately webbed like a conspiracy theorist’s pinboard, and aesthetic brilliance, being well-shot, edited, and scored, reuniting rock’n’roll with occultism in an explicit homage to the work of the ’70s rock band, T. Rex.