Let me tell you something about Longlegs.
This movie does not need to jump out from behind a door every five minutes.
It just stands across the room…
looking at you.
And somehow that’s worse.
Written and directed by Osgood Perkins, Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as FBI Agent Lee Harker, a young investigator assigned to a bizarre series of murders linked to a mysterious killer known as Longlegs.
Nicolas Cage plays Longlegs.
And when I tell you Nicolas Cage came into this movie with absolutely no intention of behaving normally?
None.
This Case Is Wrong From the Beginning
Lee isn’t investigating your standard serial killer.
Entire families have been found dead, yet investigators can’t figure out how Longlegs committed the murders because he doesn’t appear to have physically been inside the homes when they happened.
Still, strange coded messages connect him to the crimes.
There are patterns involving the families.
Dates matter.
Birthdays matter.
And the deeper Lee gets into the investigation, the more it starts feeling like somebody invited Satan into an FBI procedural.
That’s where Longlegs really worked for me.
The movie starts like a dark serial-killer mystery.
You’re thinking:
Okay, we’re tracking clues.
We’re decoding messages.
We’re finding the killer.
Then gradually the movie starts whispering:
Oh, you thought this was just about murder? That’s cute.
Maika Monroe Is Perfect for This Kind of Horror
Maika Monroe plays Lee as somebody who always seems slightly disconnected from the room she’s standing in.
She’s quiet.
Awkward.
Extremely observant.
And there is something about her from the very beginning that makes you wonder whether she’s simply a gifted investigator or whether something else is happening.
Monroe doesn’t overplay it.
That’s important.
Lee isn’t running around screaming about supernatural forces.
She looks like somebody whose brain is constantly processing something nobody else can see.
And because she’s so restrained, the weirdness around her feels even louder.
If you liked Monroe in It Follows and Watcher, she’s very much in her element here.
Apparently this woman looked at horror movies and said:
Yes, I would like to remain stressed professionally.
Then Nicolas Cage Shows Up
Now.
Nicolas.
Sir.
What exactly were we doing?
Longlegs is one of the strangest horror villains I’ve seen in a while.
Cage is buried beneath pale makeup, strange hair and an appearance that makes you immediately want to back away slowly.
Then he starts talking.
Actually…
Sometimes he talks.
Sometimes he sings.
Sometimes he screams.
Sometimes noises simply come out of him and you have to accept them.
And somehow it works.
I can absolutely see why some people thought the performance was too much.
Because Cage isn’t giving subtle serial killer.
He’s giving:
Former glam-rock singer who met the Devil behind a gas station in 1974 and never emotionally recovered.
But that’s exactly why I couldn’t look away.
Every time Longlegs appears, the movie becomes unpredictable.
Is Longlegs Actually Scary?
This is where expectations matter.
If somebody told you Longlegs was the scariest movie ever made and you’d need to sleep with every light in your house turned on?
You might be disappointed.
I wasn’t terrified.
I was uncomfortable.
And there is a difference.
The movie creates dread through empty spaces, strange framing, quiet rooms and the constant feeling that something might be standing somewhere you’re not looking.
There were several times when I caught myself checking the corners of the screen.
That is one of the movie’s best tricks.
Sometimes nothing is there.
Sometimes you aren’t completely sure.
Either way, now you’re nervous.
Thanks.
The Atmosphere Is Doing Heavy Work
Visually, Longlegs is gorgeous in the most miserable way possible.
Everything feels cold.
Isolated.
Wrong.
Homes don’t feel safe.
The FBI office doesn’t feel safe.
Lee’s mother’s house definitely does not feel safe.
At some point I realized there wasn’t a single location in this movie where I wanted to spend the night.
That’s impressive.
The cinematography constantly gives you too much empty space around the characters, which means your eyes start searching that empty space for danger.
And Perkins knows exactly what you’re doing.
He’s making you scare yourself.
Rude, but effective.
The Movie Gets Much Weirder Than the Trailer Suggests
This is also where Longlegs may divide people.
The first half feels like a creepy serial-killer investigation.
Then the supernatural elements become increasingly important.
If you wanted a grounded Silence of the Lambs-style mystery where Lee eventually figures out which basement contains the murderer?
This ain’t that.
The story eventually involves Satanic influence, disturbing dolls, family secrets and connections to Lee’s own past.
And when those pieces start coming together, the movie stops asking:
Who is Longlegs?
and starts asking:
What exactly has he been doing?
That’s a much stranger question.
I liked the shift, but I also think the mystery was slightly more frightening before everything started getting explained.
Sometimes the thing behind the curtain isn’t quite as scary as wondering what’s behind the curtain.
The Movie Does Have One Problem
For all the atmosphere and tension, the final part of Longlegs has to explain quite a bit.
And that is where the movie loses some of its creepy power.
Once characters start connecting dots and explaining exactly how certain things happened, I found myself thinking:
Okay. I understand now.
Which is useful.
But understanding something can make it less frightening.
The movie’s strongest moments happen when you have no clue what you’re looking at.
Longlegs standing somewhere singing?
Terrifying.
Someone explaining the mechanics behind the evil?
Slightly less terrifying.
Still weird.
But less terrifying.
And That Ending?
I’m not giving it away here.
Because the ending deserves its own article.
What I will say is:
Don’t expect everybody to solve the case, defeat evil, hug each other and go out for pancakes.
This is not that kind of movie.
The final stretch gets increasingly dark, and the last moments make it very clear that stopping one person doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve stopped what was happening.
The movie leaves you with just enough unanswered to keep bothering you afterward.
Which seems appropriate.
Longlegs himself feels like somebody who would absolutely ruin your evening and then continue bothering you three days later.
My Take
So did I love Longlegs?
I liked it a lot.
But I think the hype hurt it.
If you walk in expecting the most terrifying horror movie of the decade, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
This is not a nonstop scare machine.
It’s a slow, ugly feeling.
It gets under your skin.
Maika Monroe gives the movie a strong center, Osgood Perkins creates some genuinely unsettling imagery, and Nicolas Cage delivers a performance so bizarre that I still haven’t decided whether I want to applaud him or ask somebody to check on him.
Probably both.
The movie isn’t perfect.
The explanations near the end weaken some of the mystery, and people who hate slow-burn horror may start getting restless.
But the atmosphere?
Excellent.
The creep factor?
High.
The weirdness?
Off the charts.
Horror Tea Rating: 4 out of 5 Tea Cups ☕☕☕☕
Longlegs didn’t have me hiding under the covers.
It did something almost worse.
It had me staring at dark corners of rooms that I have lived in for years and suddenly thinking:
Has that corner always looked like that?
And that is exactly why I don’t play with the Devil.
Or Nicolas Cage in pale makeu