Longlegs

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” —Revelations 13:1

“What’s confusing you is just the nature of my game.” —Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, “Sympathy for the Devil”

With “Longlegs,” Osgood Perkins has made a horror movie that is as grotesque as it is gripping. It gave me nightmares, something I haven’t experienced with a genre film in some time. It certainly isn’t formulaic the way most such movies are. Although it may employ a few too many references to serial killer classics, especially “Silence of the Lambs,” and over-use of disorienting camera angles, zoom effects and moody palettes that disorient more than involve the viewer, Perkins keeps the burn slow, sometimes too slow, and avoids cheap jump scares. His pace, if not exactly heart-stopping, certainly raises the hair, and keeps things moving, but it’s not enough to overcome the weak psychological foundations of the script, the sometimes garbled Biblical references and the eye-popping plausibility deficits.

What does make “Longlegs” a fascinating, rollicking and ultimately nerve tingling experience is Nicolas Cage’s performance as the title character. I felt as though I was experiencing a visual and auditory hallucination more than I was viewing an actual performance. I have squirmed watching movie villains in the past. I still shiver when I think of some, such as Claude Rain’s “we must kill her slowly” mother in “Notorious,” Leatherface’s whole family in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and Norman Bates (Osgood Perkins is the son of late actor Anthony Perkins), the “why, she wouldn’t even hurt a fly!” loner in “Psycho.” But none of them unnerves me the way Cage’s Longlegs does. His hornet-sting of a voice and his Miss Havisham-like white makeup and attire are almost too much to take in. The director had to realize that, with Cage, he was dealing with a primal force, one beyond his control. Perkins often crops the frame that Cage appears in as if he fears letting us see something so monstrous and unbound in its entirety.

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a recent FBI academy graduate tasked with finding a serial killer (Cage) who has been honing his craft for thirty years. Sound derivative? You’re right, even though this killer makes Hannibal Lecter look like a quaint intellectual with dietary peculiarities. Harker decodes the killer’s writings, which consist of hieroglyphic symbols and inverted triangles, another bit of borrowing, that one from the Zodiac annals. She deciphers when and where, if not quite how, the killer will strike next. She works with senior FBI agent Carter (Blair Underwood) who taps her not just because she has powers of discernment, insight and even ESP, but because she may have a past personal connection to the serial killer who seeks out young girls and their parents as targets.

Lee has a detached but nonetheless emotionally rooted relationship with her mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt) who yearns for a visit from her only child, a reunion scheduled to take place on Lee’s birthday.

Dates of birth play significantly in the killer’s strategy as do a number of other strange elements such as hand-made dolls that have magical metal globes as brains, mind-control force fields emitted by said brains, and three-unit family structures, the members of which are surprisingly welcoming to oddly dressed strangers bearing weird gifts.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” —Shakespeare, “Macbeth” Act IV

Perkins uses the Book of Revelations, especially Chapter 13, as a reference point for his plot. He works out his “end of days” story by inverting the Holy Trinity with a demonic triad of dragon, anti-Christ and Satan himself whom Longlegs may represent or whom he may just serve and herald. He sometimes takes on the role of the evil one, but at other times he refers to Satan as his mentor and master, “the man downstairs.”

The plot and its metaphors get more than a bit muddled as we are asked to ponder who is who, who is doing what and why the what is being done, but every now and then Perkins hits a strong note when he defines evil, confronts it, and calls it out for what it is. The film shines when it confirms how our conflicts are not just earthly battles, but spiritual ones that require both our own strength and a supernatural power that can fight alongside us.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” —Ephesians 6:12

“The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea and perhaps
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.” —Shakespeare, “Hamlet” Act II Scene 2

Perkins’ film is a semi-solid effort that gels in some ways, but in others fails to take shape. Still, it uses horror motifs in ways that break ground and address the reality that evil is a tangible entity, one with a voice and a personality, one that Our Lord told us is real. He stood up to that reality and spoke directly to it in Chapter 5 of Mark’s gospel: “What is your name?,” He asks after he tells the evil spirit to “come out of this man.” Jesus did not mince words or speak in generalities. He sees evil for what it is and He exposes it.

Beware the movie’s excessive violence, especially an intensely graphic suicide scene, and its over-reliance on occult iconography and references that are always a spiritual threat, but enjoy, with caution, a better than average horror flick and a performance from Nicolas Cage that some might say is too much. But in Cage’s case, Mae West was spot on when she said: “too much of a good thing…is simply wonderful.”

• Occult: Extreme
• Violence: Extreme
• Profane language: Heavy
• Vulgar/Crude language: Heavy
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderate
• Wokeism: Mild
• Sex: Minor
• Nudity: None

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