I went to go see Longlegs with low expectations. Expecting maybe a low-budget serial killer film. Hopefully with an interesting twist. Within the first five minutes, my expectations were utterly demolished and the film just kept drawing me in further and further, insane plot twist after plot twist, surreal set pieces, and an understated menacing score, by the time the movie ended I was disorientated and in a state of shock at just having witnessed a modern masterpiece. Seeing Longlegs reminds me of my first viewing of The Shining or Rosemary’s Baby. And it deserves to be spoken of in the same category as those films. It's a slow burn, a hallucinogenic fugue, the likes that you don't really see in theaters anymore.
Longlegs centers on the strange killings… of entire families. And the FBI agent who tries to solve what is going on and who is behind the murders. But that is just the framework the film uses, the actual film is a descent into pure nightmare. The film starts on a strange note, and the nightmarish feelings just get deeper and deeper as the film goes on. From satanic possessions to doppelganger puppets, the film transforms and metamorphoses what it is as we watch. There is the expected ending explanation of the plot, which against all odds somehow makes the film even more surreal and nightmarish. The main character walks through the film like a sleepwalker. In fact, there is a sleepy haze throughout the entire film. The only character who seems fully awake and aware is the head detective, who stands out as a bizarre figure in this film of somnambulists. And of course, the one character awake and alive in this film is punished for that. The score is sparse, with no dramatic bursts, and no jump scares. The film just kind of quietly worms its way into your brain. Everything is off-kilter.
Longlegs is a film that compares favorably to such hypogenic films as Kurosawa’s Cure, Polanski’s The Tenant, and The Exorcist 3. This is a film that seeks to unsettle. To linger with the audience long after they have left the theater. A malignant influence, the experience of watching the film does not stop when the end credits roll. It festers in the dreams and the quiet thoughts, like low-grade acid. The film does not even feel real, after the film, you wonder if you had just hallucinated the whole thing.
Nicolas Cage is both subdued and menacing in the title role. Wonderful low-key makeup. He looks fake, like a deranged mannequin come to life. He has little actual screen time, but his presence is felt throughout the entire film. The film is all about outer influences penetrating into our lives. Puppets and sleepwalkers a central motif of the film. The film kind of follows a spiraling trajectory, circling in on itself, becoming stranger and stranger.
On a side note: This film seems to cement 2024 as the year of Ligottian puppet horror. Alongside Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion, this is a film that deals in the subversion of reality, the exploration of nightmare, and the use of puppets as metaphor. Thomas Ligotti is one of the all-time greats of horror fiction, and it was only a matter of time before his influence was felt in horror cinema. Much like Lovecraft never got really any good direct adaptations of his work, but was represented by such films as Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Ligotti’s influence is being felt in Stopmotion and Longlegs.
But what is Longlegs? What is the meaning of this strange film? Let me offer some speculation: The main protagonist laments his wearing of long legs early in the film. Like the body is some kind of stumbling vehicle for him. Awkward like stilts. Also, Longlegs can refer to a kind of spider. Quiet and predatory, laying traps for its unsuspecting victims. The film never really states what the true danger is, beyond some rather bizarre plot twists and dreamlike set pieces. Is Mr. Downstairs really the devil, Satan himself? Or is that how the burnt-out acid casualty is interpreting it? What is it that has to be smuggled in the heads of puppets to be able to infect and corrupt the families? What is it that Mr. Downstairs actually wants? There is a sense of Mr. Downstairs mocking the families, purposely ruining the lives of happy families. The strange silent puppets containing plague, the making of the families to turn violently on each other. Mr. Downstairs seems to be a kind of degrading presence, a disease to be spread. A malignant tumor in the heart of our conceptions of family and community. Is Longlegs some kind of infecting vermin? A sentient disease? A subterranean creature that designs to corrupt the family unit? The answers are not forthcoming, and the nightmare lives on.
