Early this year, NEON dropped an unsettling video teasing a mysterious, unknown film. The teaser, titled “Every year there is another.” was under a minute long and included an audio clip of a man making a 911 call, cutting to a photo of a girl’s legs- disturbingly long legs that is. Over the following month, more increasingly unnerving teasers dropped, featuring satanic symbols and a coded alphabet which viewers used to uncover the identity of the film – Longlegs directed by Oz Perkins. 

Longlegs certainly caught attention and built up expectations with its impressive marketing- but does it live up to the terror promised by the trailers? 

As a lifelong moviegoer and a devout horror fan, I can’t remember ever being this excited for a film release. The teasers and trailers for Longlegs set the stage for a truly disturbing psychological horror. The coded alphabet and mysterious teasers drew me in and stuck in my mind for the months leading up to the release. Without ever even showing the ‘monster’ of the film, I felt like I knew just enough to be terrified of him and I could not wait to see more. Though my only concern was this: humans are inherently fearful of the unknown (something the teasers used to their advantage), so can the film maintain its fear factor once its ‘monster’ is no longer hidden behind the unknown of short teasers? 

Longlegs jumps straight into the action from the first scene (I apologize to the person sitting in front of me whose chair I kicked when I jumped out of my seat). Oz Perkins, with the help of cinematographer Andrés Arochi, creates an uneasy tone to every scene of the film via a masterful and creative use of lighting and cinematography. For me, films in this genre rarely stand out for their cinematography. In fact, horror films tend to be lacking in most areas of technical production. I am shocked to say that I struggled to find a single technical element worthy of criticism in Longlegs. Everything from set design to sound production to editing were mindfully crafted to further the story. It was clear that no one technical element was done without careful consideration of the others. Every element was carried out with intention and executed with precision, taking Longlegs from a cheap flick to true cinema. 

Moving on from technical production, let’s talk about the people on-screen. Maika Monroe (playing Lee Harker) puts on the best performance of her career as a scream queen, previously starring in thrillers such as It Follows and Significant Other. What stunned me the most about this film was Nicolas Cage’s performance as the titular Longlegs. NEON and Elevation Pictures released a final teaser on July 8th, 2024, just days before the film’s wide release. The teaser, titled “Heartbeat,” reveals that Monroe had a heart monitor hooked up to her while filming her first scene with Cage as Longlegs. The teaser plays her heartbeat as she sees Longlegs for the first time. The actress’s resting heart rate of 76 BPM jumps up to a startling 170 BPM (which is, honestly, similar to how mine felt during this scene). Dear Nicolas Cage, if you are reading this, please do not take this the wrong way, but you were horrifying. I won’t give too much away in case you want to be surprised, but I will say that this is without a doubt the single best performance I have seen in a horror movie. This may not be how Cage wanted to redeem himself from past acting flops, but boy did he ever. He absolutely flawlessly portrayed the sick and twisted Longlegs in a way that shocked me to my core. Cage’s work, more than anything else, is what sold this movie for me. 

Now, with all the praise I have for Longlegs, I do have to talk about what took me out of the film a bit. The storyline of  Longlegs is reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs if it were made during the satanic panic era. The plot was well-developed and I appreciate the effort put into the depth of the characters. An unfortunate trope that many psychological thrillers and dramas fall into is creating an overcomplicated plot that they sloppily wrap up in the last 20 minutes. Longlegs, tragically, fell victim to this. In my first film class ever, the first thing we were taught is to never treat your audience like they’re stupid. In other words, let your audience put the pieces together or leave them wondering. Longlegs lost me in the last 20 minutes by overexplaining its mystery, leaving nothing to the imagination. As I said in the beginning, nothing scares people more than the unknown. Maybe this would have been scarier if every mystery and monster wasn’t brought to light. In my opinion, the plot twist was too easy to see coming and didn’t make much sense. In spite of that personal preference, I do think it could have been good if it was executed properly- which it was not. That isn’t to say this wasn’t a good story, but all of the film’s tension was dissolved much too early. 

So- did it live up to the hype? My verdict is: yes, but not how I expected. Longlegs was a different story than the trailers led me to expect. Does that mean I was disappointed? Not at all. Long Legs may have been different than what I expected, but it was nonetheless impressive, captivating, and, more than anything, shocking. Horror fans have waited too long for the genre to catch up to modern standards of film-making. Longlegs is a long awaited revival for the genre and will undoubtedly be setting a new standard for horror films going forward. Now, it’s time for me to go back to having nightmares about Nic Cage again.