Longlegs (2024)
July 14, 2024 5:06 PM - Subscribe
In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
Shepherd and I went to see this with friends this afternoon. I have to say, for me, this movie was 90% vibes and 10% plot.
I am not sure what I was expecting given I am familiar with the pace and tone of Osgood Perkins' previous films, but this didn't work for me. Again, the look and feel of the movie was great but it felt like the third act got away from them.
Anyway, always good to see Alicia Witt getting work.
Shepherd and I went to see this with friends this afternoon. I have to say, for me, this movie was 90% vibes and 10% plot.
I am not sure what I was expecting given I am familiar with the pace and tone of Osgood Perkins' previous films, but this didn't work for me. Again, the look and feel of the movie was great but it felt like the third act got away from them.
Anyway, always good to see Alicia Witt getting work.
Saw it yesterday with film buddy. Agree with your 90/10. I got hit hard by the vibes (growing up in 1970s-80s houses and working in aged institutional settings) but the plot falls apart so hard with any analysis. In fact, the vibes were actually bad enough to give me the weirds. Unfortunately, it tried to fit a lot of things in the plot, but doesn't stick with any of them to stay there and dig deep. It crams in elements of (takes breath): Satanic Panic, vague primitive evil, tech evil, Hellraiser, occult sigils, nuns, serial killer codes/patterns, creepy dolls, Silence of the Lambs, mental health is spooky, Pacific Northwest is spooky, psychic kids, whatever the hell was going on with Nic Cage, and liminal places...and that's too many tropes.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:07 PM on July 14
posted by cobaltnine at 6:07 PM on July 14
Definitely agree that the vibes were immaculate in this one. There were so many static medium shots, it felt like there were long stretches where the camera never moved, and maybe it was because of Witt being there, but I got a lot of the sort of smooth dreamy feeling I got from It Follows, but with a way stronger undercurrent of dread. For me that was enough to make me like the movie a lot, but I agree the plot is pretty overstuffed. (I felt like Perkins's two previous movies, also heavily vibes-based, needed a lot more plot, actually. Maybe on his next one he'll find the perfect balance.)
posted by whir at 6:53 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
posted by whir at 6:53 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]
My kid saw it last night, and didn't care for it. The person she saw it with liked Vampire's Kiss better.
posted by Spike Glee at 6:49 AM on July 15
posted by Spike Glee at 6:49 AM on July 15
I wrote this up for some of my friends this morning and figured I'd share it here. I saw it last night.
I am going to start with a quote from an interview Director Osgood Perkins gave to NPR:
A Martinez: How much of an influence was Silence of the Lambs really?
Osgood Perkins: I ripped it off. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't. That's the fun of it. It's meant to be sort of pop art, right? That invites the audience in to sort of say, you remember Silence of the Lambs. That made you feel good. So it's sort of like doing a little bit of a magic trick, right? With the left hand, you're saying it's Silence of the Lambs. And then you let the right hand take a right-hand turn, and it's not Silence of the Lambs at all.
I am grateful he admittedly ripped off Silence, because halfway through the first act, I'd already counted six shots that were reproductions of scenes from Silence. Not as in recreating dialogue or action, but rather the actual framing of the film and placement of the set pieces. I realize this is most likely a me problem. I've read a lot of analysis about how Demme and his cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, made specific choices in Silence to tell their story. Perkins apparently watched Silence as many times as I have, because it was uncanny to see how closely certain frames line up. When Longlegs comes out on digital, I am totally doing a side-by-side comparison.
But I understand that for the non-Hannibal-obsessed moviegoer, it's more likely to evoke the nostalgia Perkins hoped for. It's a very clever way to subliminally entice you to go along for the ride.
And the subliminal is where Longlegs shines. You can watch the whole film just paying attention to the background. Few things are stated directly. Time and place is rendered in the screen ratio instead of on-screen dates. Most of the violence is implied- which makes the violence seem bombastic when it hits, but it truly isn't worse than some episodes of Hannibal. Flickers of images appear and disappear before your brain can make anything from them other than dread. Christian Satanic Panic era fear-based Baphomet imagery is everywhere. The music is minimal, causing you to listen to every breath, creak, and whisper. The dream of 90s grunge horror aesthetic is alive in Longlegs.
Other reviewers have mentioned the tone being close to Zodiac, Se7en, and, of course, Silence of the Lambs. But my problem with that is those comparisons are setting you up to expect a much more intuitive plot, not just mood and thriller vibes. Once you wash away the expertly rendered nostalgia-as-creepy mood, you're left with characters that either aren't scary enough or are so distant it's like the one film comparison missing is Twilight, because Longleg's Lee is just like Bella; such a blank canvas of a character you can imprint whatever you want to upon her. I loved Maika Monroe in It Follows, so I know what she can do. But anything resembling agency or drive ended up on the cutting room floor or was never in the script.
You know that scene in Silence where Clarice chases Gumb through the basement and she's breathing so hard you start breathing with her? That's Lee throughout the entire film. She is either panting in fear or catatonic. Kiernan Shipka and Alicia Witt both did the zoned-out-to-scary factor much more convincingly. I wish Shipka's character was actually Longlegs.
As for Cage: I was not prepared for him as a campy version of the puppet from the Saw franchise. He did not scare me at all. I left wondering things like "Why would Satan bother with this dude?" and "Why did they need so many prosthetics?"
So the problem with comparing Longlegs to anything from the Fincher catalog or Silence is that you're then expecting intelligent characters doing intelligent things- or at least reacting to things in ways that by the time the bottom falls out, you can see how it all crumbled apart. Everyone in Longlegs has already fallen apart. I don't need an origin story, but I do want to not need to pause and wonder about basic logistics like how the fuck would Lee have ever passed the FBI's mental health tests or survived in the very sexist bureau of the 90s.
Will I watch it again? Yes. Is it worth seeing in the theater? Probably. As I said at the start, the ambiance is 90% of the film; you get that with a big screen. It does not kick out anything in my top 5 of the 2000s.
posted by haplesschild at 9:28 AM on July 15 [5 favorites]
I am going to start with a quote from an interview Director Osgood Perkins gave to NPR:
A Martinez: How much of an influence was Silence of the Lambs really?
Osgood Perkins: I ripped it off. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't. That's the fun of it. It's meant to be sort of pop art, right? That invites the audience in to sort of say, you remember Silence of the Lambs. That made you feel good. So it's sort of like doing a little bit of a magic trick, right? With the left hand, you're saying it's Silence of the Lambs. And then you let the right hand take a right-hand turn, and it's not Silence of the Lambs at all.
I am grateful he admittedly ripped off Silence, because halfway through the first act, I'd already counted six shots that were reproductions of scenes from Silence. Not as in recreating dialogue or action, but rather the actual framing of the film and placement of the set pieces. I realize this is most likely a me problem. I've read a lot of analysis about how Demme and his cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, made specific choices in Silence to tell their story. Perkins apparently watched Silence as many times as I have, because it was uncanny to see how closely certain frames line up. When Longlegs comes out on digital, I am totally doing a side-by-side comparison.
But I understand that for the non-Hannibal-obsessed moviegoer, it's more likely to evoke the nostalgia Perkins hoped for. It's a very clever way to subliminally entice you to go along for the ride.
And the subliminal is where Longlegs shines. You can watch the whole film just paying attention to the background. Few things are stated directly. Time and place is rendered in the screen ratio instead of on-screen dates. Most of the violence is implied- which makes the violence seem bombastic when it hits, but it truly isn't worse than some episodes of Hannibal. Flickers of images appear and disappear before your brain can make anything from them other than dread. Christian Satanic Panic era fear-based Baphomet imagery is everywhere. The music is minimal, causing you to listen to every breath, creak, and whisper. The dream of 90s grunge horror aesthetic is alive in Longlegs.
Other reviewers have mentioned the tone being close to Zodiac, Se7en, and, of course, Silence of the Lambs. But my problem with that is those comparisons are setting you up to expect a much more intuitive plot, not just mood and thriller vibes. Once you wash away the expertly rendered nostalgia-as-creepy mood, you're left with characters that either aren't scary enough or are so distant it's like the one film comparison missing is Twilight, because Longleg's Lee is just like Bella; such a blank canvas of a character you can imprint whatever you want to upon her. I loved Maika Monroe in It Follows, so I know what she can do. But anything resembling agency or drive ended up on the cutting room floor or was never in the script.
You know that scene in Silence where Clarice chases Gumb through the basement and she's breathing so hard you start breathing with her? That's Lee throughout the entire film. She is either panting in fear or catatonic. Kiernan Shipka and Alicia Witt both did the zoned-out-to-scary factor much more convincingly. I wish Shipka's character was actually Longlegs.
As for Cage: I was not prepared for him as a campy version of the puppet from the Saw franchise. He did not scare me at all. I left wondering things like "Why would Satan bother with this dude?" and "Why did they need so many prosthetics?"
So the problem with comparing Longlegs to anything from the Fincher catalog or Silence is that you're then expecting intelligent characters doing intelligent things- or at least reacting to things in ways that by the time the bottom falls out, you can see how it all crumbled apart. Everyone in Longlegs has already fallen apart. I don't need an origin story, but I do want to not need to pause and wonder about basic logistics like how the fuck would Lee have ever passed the FBI's mental health tests or survived in the very sexist bureau of the 90s.
Will I watch it again? Yes. Is it worth seeing in the theater? Probably. As I said at the start, the ambiance is 90% of the film; you get that with a big screen. It does not kick out anything in my top 5 of the 2000s.
posted by haplesschild at 9:28 AM on July 15 [5 favorites]
Walter Chaw's take:
Perkins’s father, actor Anthony Perkins, died in 1992 from complications of AIDS. His mother, model turned actor and photographer Berry Berenson, was on one of the airplanes that flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. There is a phone call in The Blackcoat’s Daughter to Katherine we can only hear her side of, but in the encroaching black at the edges of the screen, we know the news she’s getting. If you’ve lost a parent unexpectedly and learned of it by telephone, the scene captures how, no matter how old you are, you are in that moment a child whose parent has forgotten to pick you up from school...Longlegs, has the same extraordinary insight into the primordial fears of childhood.
...
Sometimes, I look at the last texts and messages I left for people in my life who have died and try to tell myself I said enough before it was too late. Longlegs is Perkins’s reassurance that I’ll never stop looking at them, that it’ll never have been enough and never make sense.
posted by juv3nal at 2:07 AM on July 16 [7 favorites]
Perkins’s father, actor Anthony Perkins, died in 1992 from complications of AIDS. His mother, model turned actor and photographer Berry Berenson, was on one of the airplanes that flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. There is a phone call in The Blackcoat’s Daughter to Katherine we can only hear her side of, but in the encroaching black at the edges of the screen, we know the news she’s getting. If you’ve lost a parent unexpectedly and learned of it by telephone, the scene captures how, no matter how old you are, you are in that moment a child whose parent has forgotten to pick you up from school...Longlegs, has the same extraordinary insight into the primordial fears of childhood.
...
Sometimes, I look at the last texts and messages I left for people in my life who have died and try to tell myself I said enough before it was too late. Longlegs is Perkins’s reassurance that I’ll never stop looking at them, that it’ll never have been enough and never make sense.
posted by juv3nal at 2:07 AM on July 16 [7 favorites]
So the problem with comparing Longlegs to anything from the Fincher catalog or Silence is that you're then expecting intelligent characters doing intelligent things-
I'm seeing this movie tonight, but IMO this is where the facade of those movies falls apart-in order to do *spectacle*, the smartness falls apart and fanciful takes over, in Silence and Seven. An intelligent version is where there is no Gwyneth's head in a box or Hannibal escapes due to boring bureaucratic failures, not becoming the strongest man alive. So if this movie engages in spectacle in the same ways, it's par for the course.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:20 PM on July 17
I'm seeing this movie tonight, but IMO this is where the facade of those movies falls apart-in order to do *spectacle*, the smartness falls apart and fanciful takes over, in Silence and Seven. An intelligent version is where there is no Gwyneth's head in a box or Hannibal escapes due to boring bureaucratic failures, not becoming the strongest man alive. So if this movie engages in spectacle in the same ways, it's par for the course.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:20 PM on July 17
Yeah.....bad. The villain wasn't scary and made no sense. The FBI scenes and lore attached to just kind of got skipped over. It felt really lazy and half-assed. I thought they had a glimmer of an idea at the end -the daughter old enough to make her own choices, but that's where it ended....
It's a total ripoff of movies like Silence of the Lambs and Seven though, so it's actually got that going for it. 7 is like 30 years old! A newer one to add to the pile makes sense.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:36 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]
It's a total ripoff of movies like Silence of the Lambs and Seven though, so it's actually got that going for it. 7 is like 30 years old! A newer one to add to the pile makes sense.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:36 PM on July 17 [1 favorite]
Me and my buddy laughed a lot during this. I think some of it was genuinely delightful. It was also mostly un-scary, especially in its bizarrely tidy third act—so if you go in expecting to shit yourself and sleep with the lights on for a week, you will be wildly disappointed. If you go in expecting a sometimes-great-looking 90s psychological horror pastiche with lots of fun side characters, over-the-top foreshadowing in clunky dialogue, and entertaining acting choices... you'll probably have the same good time we had.
Also, no one has had a more fascinating acting career than Alicia Witt. After the film I realized that I'd most recently seen her in a Hallmark movie at my grandma's house. Tremendous.
posted by modus_pwns at 2:00 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]
Also, no one has had a more fascinating acting career than Alicia Witt. After the film I realized that I'd most recently seen her in a Hallmark movie at my grandma's house. Tremendous.
posted by modus_pwns at 2:00 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]
wtf did marc bolan ever do to nic cage for this to happen
posted by phunniemee at 3:13 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 3:13 PM on July 20 [3 favorites]
This movie took bigger swings than we usually get in mainstream horror and landed a bunch of them, though it whiffed on others. The vibes are indeed amazing, even if the plot (weird that no cops thought it was noteworthy there was an exquisitely made life-sized doll replica of the dead girl in each house?) didn't really hold up to any scrutiny.
I cannot help but compare this to Oddity, which I saw back-to-back with this. That one didn't reach as high in terms of ambition, but also didn't have a single missed note, so it's different experience. I liked both, though.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:17 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
I cannot help but compare this to Oddity, which I saw back-to-back with this. That one didn't reach as high in terms of ambition, but also didn't have a single missed note, so it's different experience. I liked both, though.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:17 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
I was exhausted when I saw it (and had been debating not going and going to bed early) but my friends insisted I come see it with them. And as dog tired as I was, I was totally engrossed in the movie from beginning to end. And that is not a light compliment.
This movie actually reminded me of Italian horror of the 70s. There's a lot of style and interesting stuff (for lack of a better word) in every shot. Plot and character aren't the main concern. It's much more dream like. In those movies, there's really no consideration to things like internal logic. Things just happen, and the best way is to just let them wash over you. While I can see why a lot of people might not like it or feel duped by it, I definitely want to see it again.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:56 AM on September 2 [2 favorites]
This movie actually reminded me of Italian horror of the 70s. There's a lot of style and interesting stuff (for lack of a better word) in every shot. Plot and character aren't the main concern. It's much more dream like. In those movies, there's really no consideration to things like internal logic. Things just happen, and the best way is to just let them wash over you. While I can see why a lot of people might not like it or feel duped by it, I definitely want to see it again.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:56 AM on September 2 [2 favorites]
Totally failed for me. It didn't really develop or mean much of anything. Heavy-handed. Shyamalan level bad dialogue and bad choices. The vibes were tired and weak. I couldn't find any level to enjoy it on any level really.
posted by fleacircus at 10:11 PM on October 11
posted by fleacircus at 10:11 PM on October 11
I don't know if it's just that I am very, very sick, but I watched this yesterday and today with a mixture of boredom and hostility which it would be hard to overstate. Nothing about it worked for me.
I hated the writing, hated the dialogue, hated the slight little hints at characterization, hated the general lack of motivation, hated the stupidity of the FBI as depicted; hated the cinematography (overdark and low-contrast), hated that it kept reminding me of Silence of the Lambs, which is a much better film in nearly every way (not in its transphobia or homophobia, but otherwise? yeah), hated the overfiligreed plot, hated most of the acting including Nic Cage's, got no real "vibes" from it because I was never convinced by the Satanism or any of the other occult themes (in exorcism films I can at least fall back on them as psychological horror; I don't have to believe what they believe; I just have to believe they believe it. In this case, I didn't believe either, which see: acting, writing). Hated the ending. When she entered the house and saw her mother I just sighed and immediately decided "first the mother, then the doll." Instead she did nothing as her boss went off and killed his wife, after announcing that he was going to do that ("I'll be right back. You will not" or somesuch), hated the ending (they were going for Fallen or Upgrade or, yes, Se7en or Zodiac but they did not lay the groundwork to get there and it feel natural, much less unvavoidable).
For me, this was just garbage. I'll try it again in a decade or so, once I've forgotten very nearly everything about it. Maybe I'll be more receptive to it then.
posted by johnofjack at 12:55 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
I hated the writing, hated the dialogue, hated the slight little hints at characterization, hated the general lack of motivation, hated the stupidity of the FBI as depicted; hated the cinematography (overdark and low-contrast), hated that it kept reminding me of Silence of the Lambs, which is a much better film in nearly every way (not in its transphobia or homophobia, but otherwise? yeah), hated the overfiligreed plot, hated most of the acting including Nic Cage's, got no real "vibes" from it because I was never convinced by the Satanism or any of the other occult themes (in exorcism films I can at least fall back on them as psychological horror; I don't have to believe what they believe; I just have to believe they believe it. In this case, I didn't believe either, which see: acting, writing). Hated the ending. When she entered the house and saw her mother I just sighed and immediately decided "first the mother, then the doll." Instead she did nothing as her boss went off and killed his wife, after announcing that he was going to do that ("I'll be right back. You will not" or somesuch), hated the ending (they were going for Fallen or Upgrade or, yes, Se7en or Zodiac but they did not lay the groundwork to get there and it feel natural, much less unvavoidable).
For me, this was just garbage. I'll try it again in a decade or so, once I've forgotten very nearly everything about it. Maybe I'll be more receptive to it then.
posted by johnofjack at 12:55 PM on October 26 [1 favorite]
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