Longlegs is one of the most terrifying films in years

★★★★★ | Violence of the fams

Horror follows the logic of dreams. If we could reason ourselves out of terror, we would. But fear disregards rationality and rules. It thrives in an environment that doesn’t make sense. When a movie taps into that primal sensation, it touches something real and terrifying within the viewer.

Longlegs is a movie about the loss of control. It features scenarios where logic should suffice, yet everything proves futile. Watching it, I was on the verge of a panic attack. For an autistic viewer, Longlegs hits every traumatic note imaginable. It feels like a cheat, until the film explains itself enough to realize the game is rigged from the very start. The world is a cold and unfeeling place. The cosmos does not care for our existence.

Maika Monroe plays Agent Lee Harker, a traumatized FBI agent with the unnerving ability to see beyond the veil. When we first meet her, she intuits the location of a suspect by looking at a cookie cutter house. As a reward, her superior, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), brings Lee to assist in a decades-long hunt of a serial killer only known as Longlegs.

Longlegs has drawn comparison to Silence of the Lambs that, superficially, feel justified. Both are smart, classically stylized films where dread permeates every frame. They feature a strong female agent in a world of men, and have an instantly iconic villain that will haunt audiences for decades to come.

But Longlegs is more akin to The Exorcist and The Ninth Gate than it is to Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece. Silence of the Lambs exists in reality, which makes it horrifying. We know all too well that Buffalo Bill could roam the countryside, because history teaches us he did.

In Longlegs, evil is everywhere and without form. The film asks us to consider how to combat that which can only be understood through faith, which may already have abandoned us.

This is a film that exists in the crossroads of belief and dreams. It doesn’t ask the viewer to be religious, because evil surpasses man made iconography. Longlegs, played brilliantly by an unrecognizable Nicolas Cage, is a vessel for chaos. For the most part, we only see bits and pieces of him. Like the lower part of his jaw as his unnerving sing-song asks for our age. As if our point of view was that of a child. It made me feel helpless in the theater. In not seeing what I’m accustomed to, my imagination ran wild. Whatever exists beyond the frame is too terrifying not to imagine.

Longlegs shares DNA with another folk-horror masterpiece: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Like Tobe Hooper’s grimy tale of unspeakable evil, Longlegs shows us little actual violence. If you count the acts, you will barely use all fingers on one hand. Yet it feels violent all the same. Because there is no safety net, every act of evil forces us closer to the edge. As the film ends, it winks at the audience with a sadistic glee, before pushing us over.

I can’t say I had fun watching Longlegs, yet I can’t wait to see it again. It is a remarkable act of filmmaking from director Osgood Perkins. A sly and assured subversion of the genre that nevertheless pays homage to the best of them. I didn’t know what to expect, and I spent most of the film squirming in my seat. When I emerged into sunlight, I felt a sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach that didn’t leave for hours.

Longlegs is a superlative film because it makes us feel alone in the world. It shakes the very foundations of modern horror, and returns to the primal source of everything that scares us. Everyone should see it, if only so I won’t have to feel like this alone.

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