Longlegs
That being said, a successful hype-building campaign like this one certainly adds to the fun of the theater-going experience. It's exciting to go to a sold-out theater with a bunch of people looking forward to being scared stupid. If studios want to get people back into the theaters, this is the kind of stuff they should be doing.
Of course, all of that falls apart if the movie itself is no good, and thankfully that is not the case with "Longlegs". The first ten minutes are a startlingly effective piece of suspense building, as we watch a young girl in an isolated farmhouse watch a car slowly pull up to the driveway. The scene moves almost in slow motion, building dread with such simplistic ease that your muscles are already at full tension by the time the girl starts to have a conversation with the mysterious man, further heightened by the clever decision to frame the man as a small child might see him, without seeing his entire face. By the time the scene is over, you're already completely in the movie's thrall, with no idea what's going to happen next.
From there, things shift into a more familiar and entertaining mode, following FBI agent Lee Harker (Monroe) as she gets involved in a serial killer case. Things start to proceed in a fashion similar to genre favorites like "Se7en" and "Silence of the Lambs," where a serial killer plays a cat-and-mouse game with an increasingly frustrated detective who is constantly one step behind, with the killer seemingly wanting the detective (and thus the audience) to eventually figure things out.
Harker displays evidence of possible clairvoyance through testing and is assigned to a decades-spanning case of a series of brutal murder/suicides involving families throughout the state of Oregon. She begins to go through the clues with her supervisor Carter (Blair Underwood), your classic grizzled and jaded detective. Harker, on the other hand, is extremely quiet and antisocial, never speaking above a whisper and moving through grisly crime scenes with an unchanging, muted expression. There is a reason for her behavior that I won't spoil, but it's hard to evaluate Monroe's performance as good or bad because of it; she is capably doing what the mostly thankless role requires.
On the other hand, there's the performance of Nic Cage. Cage casts a terrifying figure, even buried under caked-on makeup and bulbous prosthetics. His character has enough visual appeal and built-up mystique to often be quite scary, but Cage inevitably goes into full showboating mode, screaming nonsensically and imbuing his character with a manic energy that comes off as ludicrous instead of insidious. It's the kind of performance we've come to expect from Cage, barely balancing on the edge of laughing with him and laughing at him. His casting was clearly done with the intention of utilizing his particular brand of charisma, but it doesn't quite work in later scenes where his shtick undermines the sinister tone the rest of the movie is working so hard to maintain.
This sinister tone and sense of impending doom is the movie's biggest strength, as smaller reveals build and build suspense, never quite releasing into any dramatic explosions, all the way until the final scenes. This can also be a little frustrating, as some of the clue-gathering can start to get repetitive, causing a sense of impatience to set in. Perkins is likely hoping Monroe and Cage's quirky performances can help navigate viewers through some of this table-setting, but your mileage may vary.
Ultimately, things finally come to a head in a third act that asks a lot of the viewer. Lee's mother (a spectacular and almost unrecognizable Alicia Witt) quite literally explains what's going on during a voiceover flashback that is both painfully jarring and somewhat helpful, given the lack of solid details given to that point. It's the kind of ending where you want to trust that the filmmaker has provided a reason for everything that's happening, but you also suspect maybe the script could've used an extra draft or two, and the ambiguous nature of the climax is just a crutch. The end result is a kind of hollow feeling that lingers with you as you leave the theater, appreciating the craft and the effective evocation of dread, but left with questions that probably don't have answers that would change your opinion of the movie in any meaningful way.
So of course, "Longlegs" doesn't quite live up to its hype, but there's still plenty to enjoy. Even a movie that makes you feel dread or a kind of existential uneasiness is succeeding in making you feel something. It's just a shame that the story couldn't match the effectiveness of the tone.
