Longlegs★☆☆☆☆
Longlegs might have you longing for legs fast enough to run straight out of the theater. In a year already full of horror flops, this one takes the cake—or maybe just trips over it, leaving us with nothing but a crumpled mess of wasted potential and cringe-worthy performances.
Set in the 1990s (because nostalgia can only carry so much weight), Longlegs follows rookie FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), who’s tasked with solving a string of murders involving whole families butchered by their patriarchs—who then kill themselves. If that sounds chilling, it’s only because you haven’t yet endured the film’s plodding exposition. Harker has some supernatural sixth sense (of course she does), which leads her to the occult serial killer behind it all: the hilariously over-the-top Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). As the bodies pile up, so do the clichés.
At its core, Longlegs tries to explore the clash between rational crime-solving and supernatural evil, but instead it ends up feeling like a poor imitation of The Silence of the Lambs with an unnecessary Stephen King-esque occult twist. It flirts with grand ideas about trauma, power, and destiny, but all that’s left is a murky stew of undercooked concepts. The real horror here? How obvious every plot point is an hour before it happens.
Osgood Perkins, son of Psycho’s Anthony Perkins, leans heavily into moody, slow-burn atmosphere, but forgets to inject any real tension or scares. The cinematography is dark and brooding, but like a goth teenager, it’s all brooding with no bite. There are snakes, gooey substances, and creepy dolls thrown in for visual flair, yet none of it adds to the dread. It’s as if Perkins is trying to convince us this is arthouse horror, but it lands as a confusing blend of “weird for the sake of being weird.”
Nicolas Cage does what Nicolas Cage does best: goes full-on bananas. His turn as Longlegs, a glam-rock reject turned killer, is a cacophony of wails and dramatic gestures, but even his signature Cage madness can’t salvage this wreck. His performance is so outlandishly unhinged it verges on parody, which would be fine if Longlegs were in on the joke—but it’s not. Maika Monroe, on the other hand, gives us a protagonist so dull she might as well be a blank space. Lee Harker is meant to carry the emotional weight, but Monroe’s flat, detached performance makes it impossible to care.
The pacing here is glacial, with each scene dragging out the inevitable reveals like a horror film stuck in slow motion. When the plot does manage to move forward, it stumbles over its own supernatural logic. The final act, meant to be a climactic showdown, feels like a fumbled attempt to combine every occult and serial-killer trope Perkins could find in his horror playbook. You’re left checking your watch long before the credits roll.
As someone who loves a good horror film—whether it’s an artful slow-burn or a campy gore-fest—Longlegs was disappointing on every level. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh, scream, or just groan in exasperation as the film veered wildly from self-serious moodiness to unintentionally hilarious absurdity. By the time Cage’s killer finally “unleashes,” I was more concerned with surviving the movie than the characters were about surviving him.
This is one for the hardcore Nicolas Cage completists—those who revel in his weirdest, wildest performances and can overlook the film wrapped around him. For anyone else? Do a runner. There are far better (and scarier) ways to spend 101 minutes. Longlegs is a horror film that limps when it should sprint, leaving you wishing for an early exit from the theater—and the film itself.
