One of the best horror movies ever made was “Psycho.” Now Anthony Perkins’ son Osgood “Oz” Perkins is making horror movies. He wrote and directed this. A great decision Oz made was getting his brother Elvis (yes, Elvis Perkins is his name) to do a few songs. If you ever get a chance to check out the third most talented Elvis (behind Presley and Costello, of course), you won’t be disappointed; try his record “Ash Wednesday.” But I digress.
I’m also a fan of T. Rex, and while it was cool to hear three of their tunes in here (and seeing a poster for “The Slider” album), it didn’t make sense why the film started with lyrics from “Bang a Gong” (the movie ended with the actual song), until after you see the film and realize the meaning in the film of the lyrics of: you’ve got the teeth of the hydra upon you/you’re dirty, sweet, and you’re my girl.
Casting Nicolas Cage as a guy that was…kind of dressed with the Marc Bolan/glam look, with a weird white wig…probably looked good on paper. Yet he was so over-the-top, it made it a bit too campy. That didn’t jibe with the FBI crime drama of the rest of the movie, which was trying to be “Silence of the Lambs.” It’s like Cage was in a completely different film.
Longlegs is getting a lot of buzz, and oddly, a high Rotten Tomatoes score (Katie Walsh of The LA Times gave it 4 stars out of 4 for some reason).
The story takes place in the mid-90s. It borrows from a lot of other movies. We get dead bodies, with letters written in a Zodiac-style code that nobody can figure out. FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe from the horror movie “It Follows”) shows she has some psychic ability. That means she’s brought in on the case that has been going on for over three decades to see if she can crack the code.
Nicolas Cage plays Longlegs, the guy whose name appears on the letters, yet he leaves no traces of DNA showing he was even there. That means there could be a satanic cult of some kind. What you’ll find out later, is a lot of mumbo jumbo about dolls that possess the fathers to engage in murder/suicides.
The first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie was a good set-up, and Perkins can shoot some creepy shots. The camera often lingers on an isolated farmhouse, or a strange car parked outside.
Alicia Witt was good in her part, making me think a little bit of the ‘70s classic “Carrie.”
Blair Underwood does a decent job as the FBI boss Carter, although there are a handful of things his character does that don’t make much sense (why does the new agent have to come into his house? Why does she have to go into the daughter’s bedroom at midnight by herself? And why when the girl talks about an upcoming birthday, and we’re already told about the deaths happening always on a young girl's birthday…we kinda know where their story is going).
One of the things borrowed from many horror films (and Twilight Zone episodes), was the use of evil dolls (the movie “M3GAN” did it well). But the way they work is rather goofy.
And since over 80% of movies have vomit scenes, you’ll get one here.
Perhaps horror movie aficionados will dig this, but there’s not much for anybody else. Don’t believe the hype.
1 star out of 5. My wife hated it, too.