Longlegs (2024) Review

Plot: Special Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is tasked by her boss (Blair Underwood) to find an elusive serial killer only known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage).

Review: I always get nervous when I hear critics hailing a movie. So, when I heard all the fanfare about a little film called Longlegs, I immediately became suspicious. However, it’s got Maika Monroe, who I liked from The Guest and It Follows, Blair Underwood, who I’ve liked since L.A. Law and Nic Cage…I mean, who doesn’t like Nic Cage? Plus, the trailer looked cool, so I thought it was worth a look-see.

Well, my reservations were correct. While it’s not an utter piece of garbage, Longlegs is a mostly shrug-inducing and unremarkable film. I want to say there was potential here, but I feel like the writer/director, Osgoode Perkins, had more faith in the story than he should have. It’s a plodding mess with characters I couldn’t care less about and some really odd choices. I’ve heard that Perkins said Silence of the Lambs inspired this movie. I don’t know what version of Silence of the Lambs he saw, but there’s nothing evident here.

Let’s start with that story. It’s an investigative story that mainly focuses on Monroe’s character. So, there’s staring—lots of staring. Essentially, you, the audience member, are staring at the characters staring. I’m not joking. Amidst all this staring, you get a chaotic mix of scenes that are supposed to make sense. Why is Longlegs doing what he’s doing? How will Harker catch him? How does Harker’s mother play into this? It just goes on and on, and the payoff isn’t worth it. When I found out how the murders were taking place, I thought someone was pulling my leg. But nope, it’s really what they went with. It’s so ridiculous, I can’t even tell you. Oh, and for you woke fans, there’s something there for you too!

Now, let’s move on to the characters. Let’s start with Maika. As I said earlier, I like Maika. However, her character in this movie is not great. She’s unrelatable and wooden. Maika said in interviews that she’s nothing like the character. Well, thank God, but she sucks. Harker also does one of the all-time stupidest things I’ve seen in a movie. I was literally baffled.

Nic Cage is borderline unwatchable as Longlegs. I have no idea what he’s saying more than half the time, and he’s over-acting like mad. If you’ve ever seen an Ultimate Warrior wrestling interview, that’s the equivalent of this performance—a lot of tone shifts and babbling. Also, Longlegs does nothing in this movie. Nothing. I’m serious. He’s not creepy, he’s not scary, he’s just weird. Also, his makeup is atrocious. I don’t know why they wanted him to look like a B-level Beetlejuice, but it just looks horrible.

The only saving grace in the cast is Blair Underwood, who is stellar as always as Harker’s no-nonsense boss. Even Alicia Witt and Kernan Shipka are awful, and they both look like they’d rather be in a different film.

There were no scares. Some audience members gasped at a certain scene, but I just shrugged. The scares weren’t revolutionary or memorable in any way. There were a lot of the usual, “Look! There’s a person in Maika’s house, and she’s not there! Isn’t that scary?” or, “Look! Someone is standing at the edge of the woods! Isn’t that scary?” No…no, it’s not.

I wish I could tell you that Longlegs has a great score, but I don’t even remember it having a score. The director tried tricks like moving the screen to a 4:3 ratio for flashback scenes, cutting in weird imagery (that ended up having no relevance), and using framing to show Harker always on a journey or something like that. My answer to that is, you can put lipstick on a pig—but it’s still a pig.

Anyhow, I did not enjoy Longlegs. Even though it was 100 minutes, it felt like I was in the movie theatre for a week. I didn’t like many of the characters, there were no scares, and the story was kind of ridiculous. I’m not going to recommend this one. Only watch it if you’re easily scared, easily entertained, and don’t care if a movie doesn’t make sense.