Longlegs (2024) Spoiler Thread

[Eric Deetz]

Discuss

[Webslinger]

A deliciously screwed up horror film. Five thoughts:

 

1.) It's wild that nine years have passed from what should have been Maika Monroe's big breakthrough performance in It Follows to this. She's really good in channeling the steely intensity of Jodie Foster's performance in The Silence of the Lambs with her work here. Monroe successfully plays Lee as an inured and determined character, which makes any moments where that practiced tough exterior cracks all the more effective. Hopefully this is the one that allows Monroe to stick as a big star.

 

2.) I suppose people might end up being divided on Nicolas Cage's work as the titular villain, but I think it's a role where his big, hammy approach is perfectly suited to the material. His scenes as Longlegs consistently feel too eerie to really describe, which is quite an accomplishment in a style that could easily have come off as unintentionally funny if not calibrated correctly.

 

3.) I kinda saw the twist about Lee's mother coming. Something just seemed off about her from the very first conversation she has with Lee, and I was also scratching my head at why she would be available to talk over the phone in what clearly seemed to be the middle of the night. Even so, the reveal of her in the nun outfit and the subsequent explanation of how she assisted Longlegs were chilling.

 

4.) I was really impressed with how well the film's mostly grounded approach gelled with the supernatural/occult content. It's a tough balance to achieve, but the film pulls it off and is all the more unsettling for it.

 

5.) I was totally on board with all the stylistic and aesthetic swings Oz Perkins is taking behind the camera. The atmosphere is consistently creepy and gives the audience little relief from the darkness of the world Lee occupies.

 

A-

[Krissykins]

The horror film of the year. 
 

A lot of it hinges on if you find the antagonist scary, and I did. The opening scene is one of the best in recent years, when he leered into frame I got such a fright. 
 

Alicia Witt! Wow. 

[Cmasterclay]

Great first hour until it became a hokey B-movie about supernatural dolls. 

[JohnnyGossamer]

Wonder if she'd shot the doll to destroy the orb if that would've ended it before her superior killed his wife and had to be killed?

[CoolioD1]

I didn't know Alicia Witt was in this always nice to see her get a big role in something that's not a Hallmark Christmas movie these days she was great too.

[MOVIEGUY]

This really didn't work for me. The tension isn't really there outside a few brief moments, and the sense of constant dread they were trying to build eventually just started to feel dull and one-note. The lead actress looks terrified and on the verge of tears in every scene no matter how expositional or mundane, which isn't the most compelling way to carry a film. The whole thing is so dour and ding-dong serious even up until the last act when it gets very hokey B-movie, and it's like the director didn't get the memo and was still taking it way too seriously.

 

In the very last scene, when Nic Cage winks and says "hail Satan" it's like at the very last moment they finally allowed themselves some fun with this Satanic occult story, and I feel like the rest of the movie could've benefitted from a bit more of that trashy tone instead of the constant over-the-top downer vibe. I did like how it was shot though, the opening credits and the use of T. Rex in the soundtrack.

Edited July 14 by MOVIEGUY

[Maaatt]

23 hours ago, Cmasterclay said:

Great first hour until it became a hokey B-movie about supernatural dolls. 

Yeah this is basically where I think I come down too, though i might be slightly more generous on the last act (emphasis on slightly). The last act is definitely where it started to lose me though with the introduction of supernatural creepy dolls which felt like something out of Annabelle or the Conjuring, not the first half of this movie. I thought the reveal about Lee’s mother largely worked, even if it was somewhat predictable. Im not big on supernatural so perhaps this component just wasn’t for me. 

[ListenHunnyUrOver]

I don’t like dissing actors, but Maika Monroe really didn’t do it for me here. I think another actress would’ve made this a better movie. 

[RyneOh1040]

It's hard to follow box office like we do, the trades, etc. AND protect yourself from the hype. I thought the marketing for this (the phone number, the web site) was so god-tier that paired with the rave reviews I went in so ready. 

I DO think this film has a beautiful, beautiful style but I personally did not find it frightening. Maybe disturbing but even then it felt tame to me. I actually thought the biggest jump scare of the entire film was the opening scene where Longlegs bends down into frame, so seeing that set me up for a lot of scares that I just didn't think ever made there way in to the story. 

 

To me this is no where near top 10 scariest/most disturbing films of the last decade-ish (Hereditary by a mile, The first two Conjurings all way, way more frightening) but I thought this was really well crafted film and I LOVED monroe in this.  7/10.

[JohnnyGossamer]

Oh. Last act was the best part. Did people actually want something boring like True Detective? Making it the devil did it was refreshing and great. 

[filmlover]

This was an ultimately mixed bag for me that certainly has its positives (the atmosphere that Osgood "son of Anthony" Perkins creates is quite creepy and effective), but overall came across as too derivative and hamstrung by its twists for me to find it worthy of its hype. I was actually quite into it for the first hour, as Perkins does a solid job emulating the feel of 90s serial killer movies (The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, Copycat) even if his film is obviously wearing its influences on its sleeve. But it lost me once it threw out its grounded nature up until that point and took a turn for the supernatural with possessed dolls causing murder.

 

I will say I appreciate that the ambiguous ending leaves it open for interpretation (is Lee now possessed?), though at the same time, left me frustrated (her superior and the wife might have still been alive if she hadn't used up her bullets and taken out the doll first). Maika Monroe gives a solid lead performance, but I thought, outside of his first appearance at the beginning, Nicolas Cage was far too hammy to come across as creepy. Appreciate Alicia Witt enjoying her most prominent role in forever.

 

I didn't hate this, but I definitely wanted much more out of it.

 

C+

[Flopped]

I guess I liked it more than most here. 

It's impressive how it manages to sustain a feeling of dread and unease for almost its entire running time. 

 

I found Cage effective but I get why some didn't. 

 

I admit the plot and especially the third act don't bear scrutiny. Why spend so much time showing her put clues together, circling numbers, connecting the dots (literally) and trying to make sense of these incompressible murders only to just be like "never mind, actually a satanic doll did it!" 

 

Still, I'm going to give this a B+. 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15 by Flopped

[ThePhasmid]

Strong B+.

 

The interrogation scene with Nic Cage is the showstopper. It's the kind of extreme performance moment where the audience is either all in or out. It reminds me of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Almost everything else is played very straight, and then you have this crazed oddball horror like figure disrupting the frequency of all the other performances. Ozgood mentioned Nicolas didn't want to change a word from the script, but it's clear he was allowed to improvise the performance.

[Becker]

Was hoping for another Silence of the Lambs, a thrilling horror movie grounded in reality. Which is what we got ..... in the first half of the movie, where it was at it's apex. Get out of here with that "Power of Satan" crap. It really took the realism out of the movie and the style that it was going for. The film can hang it's hat on the basis that it still surpasses the Quiet Place Part One in both quality and intensity though. 

 

 

[Avatree]

absolutely cracking movie. anxiety inducing.

[thajdikt]

A- loved it

[Stoner opinions 42069]

Not a fan of this movie. I suppose it is ok.  I feel when I was a teenager I might have thought it was cool...but it all felt like someone trying to make a cool looking scary movie but no moments felt authentic and I truly did not care about a single person. In fact I felt pretty removed from it all and like the movie has no real emotional core. 

I saw some folks saying it seemed grounded but I disagree. I couldn't get a grounding on anything.   The lead Agent (Monroe) felt so overly stiff and odd that I never understood why she was doing anything she did. I see her character being compared to Jodi Foster in Silence of the Lambs but they are nothing alike.  Monroe's character is a bit psychic..I guess, though that seems to go away after it's introduced.  And she isn't that into her job as three scenes in Longlegs is in her house, leaves her a letter and she never tells a single person.  I guess to protect her mom? Though that also is dropped and I never felt she was worried about her mom being killed...Jodi Foster in Silence was pure hard professional good at her job agent. 

We also get a lot of scenes of the agents discussing the case, so I assumed what they said mattered in those scenes but...they kept saying they found no proof the killer (Longlegs) was ever in the houses. "No DNA" but it turns out her mother was always there, sometimes covered in blood when she left ..so...just had police work?  How did they never see any signs of her being there?  Of a person being there?  

It was pretty obvious to me Monroe and Alicia Witt were involved from the jump.  Since we really had no other characters but the other agent dude. And they laid out they thought Longlegs had family helping him.  (Why was he never like "you and my daughter both have birthdays in the 14th") 

Hail Satan isn't that scary and it just felt like they were all pumped to have Nic Cage play over the top weird but for once, I didn't like it. 

D

 

I would suggest MANDY a far better Nic Cage horror.