Longlegs spoiler-free review – Skittering under your skin

A reticent young woman with the ability to see things that her colleagues at the Federal Bureau of Investigation don’t. An unhinged serial killer taunting the authorities as their murders go unsolved for decades. The FBI boss who recognises the fledgling agent’s potential and cultivates her unprecedented connection with the predator.

Must be The Silence of the Lambs. Oh, no, wait, it’s Longlegs. The Internet is currently writhing with hype for the new horror thriller written and directed by rising genre auteur Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, I am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel). Longlegs is a deliberately throwback effort that mixes disturbing crime procedural and supernatural chills. We haven’t seen something like it in quite some time, which is to say don’t expect originality for the most part.

As a little bit more narrative context, Maika Monroe, who starred in modern indie horror hit It Follows, plays damaged but determined FBI agent Lee Harker. It’s the pre-Internet 1990s, and she’s in pursuit of an unrecognisable Nicolas Cage as the title character, a Satanic sociopath – with a strong resemblance to Saw’s Billy puppet – who likes to slaughter whole families. Or, rather, somehow Longlegs gets the father in these households to unleash the savagery for him, disguising the acts as a murder-suicide. Finally, there’s Lee’s superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), who at this point in the dead-end investigation is content to let Lee run with her intuition.

That’s about it, really. Longlegs comes across as a James Patterson novel where the villain is actually plugged into the supernatural. You don’t want to think too long and hard about the plot because its many flaws quickly become apparent. Viewers must suspend their disbelief so that key players can be manoeuvred into position for a creepy scene or three. You’re also forced to overlook a timeline that doesn’t make sense, especially when considering character ages.

That said, you probably won’t be watching Longlegs for its story. Rather, it’s about the full experience; the atmosphere. Perkins, the son of Psycho star Anthony, proves yet again that he has a master’s grip on shot set-up and the use of quiet to cultivate a relentlessly ominous and uncomfortable mood that occasionally sparks “nope, I’m outta here” terror.

Unlike Gretel & Hansel, though, Perkins gets the pacing right this time around. Longlegs is tight, artful and impactful. It’s a rare horror film that convincingly insists dark spiritual forces are real, and their devotees are among us, wielding power on behalf of evil from a whole other plane. It does this by avoiding hysterical filmmaking flourishes, although Cage is let loose in a deranged performance guaranteed to produce a few uneasy chuckles from the audience.

Longlegs works hard and consistently to get an emotional response out of viewers. It leverages a dozen tropes ranging from nuns, Uncanny Valley dolls, and Book of Revelation quotes to creepy men looming over little girls, and explosive brutality that comes out of nowhere. If you stay immersed in feeling it’s fine. Take a step back, though, and genre fans will likely realise they’re witnessing an exercise in pastiche. A well-made and entertaining one, but a calculated copy-paste from predecessors.

Despite cerebral resistance though, Longlegs still manages to crawl under your skin, and stay there. Ultimately, the film’s closest cinematic relative feels less like The Silence of the Lambs, and more like Hereditary in that its effect lingers, and potentially grows stronger over time. Atmosphere alone does not make a great movie, but when, days later, the memory of a single on-screen moment still causes your skin to prickle, and has you looking apprehensively towards the darkest corners of the room, it’s done its job. You have to give Perkins that, even if the full package falls short of the promise.

Longlegs is in cinemas from 12 July.