Longlegs (2024)
Directed by Osgood Perkins
Written by Osgood Perkins
Starring Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood
Release Date July 12th, 2024
Published July 12th, 2024
If you haven't seen the movie Longlegs yet, I recommend seeing it before you read this review. Not because I plan on having spoilers in this review. Rather, it's because Longlegs is a great movie to go into not knowing much about it. The less you know about Longlegs, the more shocking, scary, and unnerving the experience of Longlegs will be. This is not a beginner's level horror movie. If you like films like Hereditary or The Silence of the Lambs, this is on that level, a level that requires a threshold for shocks built up through years of genre study.
Longlegs stars Maika Monroe as FBI Agent Lee Harker. Relatively new to the FBI, one of Harker's first field experiences is seeing her partner murdered right in front of her. This came immediately after she had advised her partner that the man they were looking for, a dangerous serial murderer, was in a house she'd seemingly identified at random. Is she psychic? Is this a premonition? How did she manage to pick the one house out of a cookie cutter neighborhood, as the one where the killer was staying?
Harker's premonition and her subsequent capture of the killer, brings Harker to the attention of FBI Boss, Carter, played by Blair Underwood. Carter is after an even more dangerous and unpredictable killer who has claimed the name Longlegs in his seemingly nonsensical letters to law enforcement. Longlegs has been tormenting the FBI since the late 1960's, annihilating entire families without even stepping foot inside the family home.
Carter hopes that whatever gift Harker has, even if she isn't psychic, that she might be able to bring something fresh to this stalled investigation. And she immediately pays off by solving Longlegs' cypher that has been part of all of the murders to this point. Somehow, Longlegs immediately knows that Harker is now on his case and, in a scene of stomach-churning suspense, he comes to her home to drop off a birthday card.
