Longlegs: Movie Review

By Graham Craycraft

Longlegs is Oz Perkins’ fourth film as a director and third film in which he both directed and wrote. A 2025 film based on Stephen King’s The Monkey is currently in post production. 

Longlegs is a horror film starring Maika Monroe and Nicholas Cage that begins with intensity that seldom lets up for the one hour 41 minute runtime. Monroe plays Lee Harker- an FBI agent with some unexplained supernatural powers that is a perfect fit to hunt mysterious serial killer Longlegs (Cage). Longlegs appears to be killing people, entire families, without ever making direct contact with them; so, what is the FBI to do? Harker is assigned to the case and with her esp makes immediate headway. 

As the investigation progresses, the horror takes a deep and skin-crawling turn when we learn that Harker is somehow connected with Longlegs and that these killings are demonic. Cage gives a fantastic performance as essentially a servant of Satan. One could almost feel bad for him as anyone who serves Satan, especially with such direction and focus, is certainly a slave with compromised free will. But, as with Judas, at what point does our pity blind us to someone’s human choices at least begun by their own volition. Longlegs is a menace, a fiend, and a murderer that shows no remorse for his service to Satan. 

There is little more I can say regarding the plot so I can avoid spoilers, but there are two points of criticism to address. Horror movies have a bad reputation of being lazy and using cliche plot points that make the story more convenient and succinct. I am a big fan of succinct, but never if it costs cliche. At one point, in order to tell the audience Longlegs is Satanic, Detective Harker happens to have the perfect book and the precise format of days and months that create an occult image when traced. Longlegs could have informed the audience a hundred different ways, or, and this really is frustrating, not included this at all. The plot would not have suffered one tiny bit from this lazy trope being excluded. Two, Nick Cage. Anyone who’s seen several Nick Cage films knows he has the reputation of essentially playing Nick Cage regardless of the film he’s in. Not all of his films are this way by any means- he has several fantastic roles and Longlegs overall is included in one of those. However, one line of dialogue at a crucial moment in the movie is so cringingly Nick Cage with bad dialogue that it takes you out of the story and makes you go… what? Now instead of being afraid and on the edge of my seat, I’m scratching my head and feeling irritated. Horror movies especially require that the audience feels as if they are in the story, otherwise why should we be scared? 

This movie is good, some scenes very good. But unfortunately a few mistakes cast a bad light over other parts. Rotten tomatoes currently has this sitting at an 86% while IMDb a 7.2. I’m feeling right in the middle. 

79/100