"Longlegs" - Can I get the movie from the trailers?

Josh
Aug 2, 2024
6 min read

Updated: May 17, 2025

Dir. Oz Perkins (2024)

A+ for marketing, C for the film.

The last thing I want to think when leaving a movie is, “Oh boy, I think when I get home, I’m going to watch the trailers for this because they were better than the movie.” Like a lot of horror movies, this one was a victim of its own notoriety. And, I feel like I need to talk about the marketing and a bit of background before jumping into the film so my opinion is justified. The first piece of marketing I saw for this film was this trailer here and at the time, I honestly thought it was a clip from an analogue horror series. I thought, holy crap this is unsettling and sounds like a need concept but paid no attention to the channel itself. I just moved on. Then the trailer for Los appeared on my feed and I recognised the imagery from that teaser I saw over a month ago - good sign if imagery from a 30 second teaser stuck with me for that long. I was very excited for this movie. Cryptic messaging in the trailer, picturesque Kubrick symmetrical cinematography, a tense soundtrack with a nice overall vagueness to the trailer. Neon continued to kill it with marketing, reminiscent of a Blair Witch style of viral marketing, sharing cryptic messages on social media or leaving comments under peoples Letterbox accounts from the account ‘Mr_Downstairs. I was strapped in for a modern Silence of the Lambs; a new crime thriller classic. Upon missing the early screenings I attended what I expected to be a busy Friday night screening. But the screening was dead. The only other people in the cinema was a small group that, even though every seat was empty, managed to be right next to us. So this was the first round of alarm bells in my head, I’ve heard a ton of hype around this movie and even the early screening sessions on a Wednesday night were fully booked but did word of mouth not travel throughout the rest of the week? So, just from the lack of a turn out on a Friday night a sixth sense rushed through my body; warning me that this might not be what I’m expecting.

Also, side note. I made a joke to my friends I was with during one of the opening trailers and the person right next to me must have thought it was funny as well because he told it back to his friends as well. They all laughed harder than my friends. Not relevant to the movie, just wanted to call that out.

This is going to contain spoilers because I cannot talk about my core issues with this movie without getting into them all.

So we follow our lead, Agent Lee Harker played by the fantastic Maika Monroe (It Follows, The Guest) whose performance reminded me a lot of Holly Hunter in the way she quietly spoke. (As well links between this movie and Hunters 1995 film Copycat have been made) Harker starts as a young investigator and who after a field mission that went astray, is recruited by Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) to join in the investigation of the Longlegs killer. Now, this is where I was strapped in but my second round of alarm bells were going off. The opening field mission that ended in tragedy teases that Harker may have some type of clairvoyance power, as she seems to get a sixth sense that the person they’re hunting is in this random suburban house. Teasing and setting up themes of horror in suburbia. This apparent sixth sense is what brings her on to help find Longlegs, a serial killer that seems to murder whole families without even entering the victims property or leaving any form of DNA behind. It’s speculated that he must somehow influence the father of the household to commit the killings, only to leave behind cryptic notes. Harker joins with the hope she'll find something the current investigators have overlooked. In which Carter has a line, and I’m paraphrasing “If you look for too long, your eyes start to see things.” Which I thought was a clever nod and audience participation as this movie is shot wide and beautifully. We’re graced with plenty of wide shots where you’re desperate to look for something in the frame. Some shots were reminiscent of Deep Red (Dario Argento), where the framing of a shot will naturally guide your eye to a portion of the screen where you wait for something to happen, only to have nothing happen.

And despite all the skill on display with the visuals little annoyances in the story began to rear their heads. Longlegs would leave behind cryptic notes, Zodiac style, although unlike Zodiac the methodical uncovering behind the meaning of the hieroglyphic language are pretty short lived. It’s discovered that murders occur a few days around birthdays of the victims, which just happens to land on the birthday of our lead. So when Longlegs leaves behind a cryptic birthday card, he also leaves behind a Roseta Stone for the symbols. So in just the very next scene, we have our character solving all of the letters which for me ruined the intrigue of watching our detectives use their wits. Similarly, Harker is attempting to figure out when the next time Longlegs will strike. And here we get our first introduction to the Mother, played by Alicia Witt, where she asks the question ‘Are you still saying your prayers? Our prayers protect us from the devil’. Remember that. So attempting to uncover a potential date of the next birthday, Harker starts to plot out dates on a calendar… well not a calendar, but more like a printed out timeline. And not by picking up on a pattern, the next date is revealed by folding the paper in half. Which reveals that the dates create a demonic symbol found in a bible. So…first of all. Why fold it? There was no reason for her to fold it, no hints or realisations. It just gets folded. And secondly, this feels extremely lucky she happened to use that specific format of calendar in order for this to actually work out. The whole scene just felt contrived to get over the hurdle of figuring out the next date. So by this point, I knew Perkins didn’t care about a detective story and that’s not what I was getting.

The last part of the plot I really want to touch on are the ‘twists’ and ‘revolutions’ throughout this movie. At the beginning of the film, there’s a little stinger where Longlogs interacts with a young girl and because you never see or hear of that girl again, you figure out pretty quickly that young girl Harker. Following more ‘clues’ from her childhood, they very easily track down Longlegs and take him in. Here we get a pretty strange performance from Nic Cage where we finally get a proper look at him in his botched Marilyn Manson looking make-up. Like most disturbing horror films, creepy can border on comedic. For me his over the top acting leant more towards creepy as all his movements and pronunciation was just so strange and also captivating. But on the other end, his whole character is pretty cliched as well, as he wears those classic creeper glasses, has niche hobbies and jobs like doll making while wearing odd mismatched clothing. Although it is cut short as Nic Cage talks in riddles about the ‘the man down stairs’ and bashes his head on the table, ending his life in a pretty graphic way in front of Harker. So the movie has transitioned from ‘who is Longlegs’ to ‘who has been helping Longlegs kill these people?’ And as a savvy viewer, you remember the only other character in the movie apart from the detectives we’ve been introduced to… that’s right, it's the Mother and Longlegs using satanic powers to influence the families. Full spoilers, it’s relieved the Mother started working with Longlegs since their first encounter all those years ago to murder these families. And the way it's done, really hurt the movie for me. Longlegs would create a doll replica of the child of the target family and disguised as a nun the Mother would enter the home and leave the doll inside the house. And with the power of the Devil, it would invest evil into the home. For me, this pivot to the supernatural really took me out of the movie. As mentioned, the hints of religious themes throughout the whole movie from the Mother and her prayers to seeing crucifixes in almost every building they’re in. But I would have preferred if they were just themes, not the core villain of the movie.

To me Longlegs seems to want to tell a story about what makes families tick. And Oz Perkins looks to insist that family violence can come from an outside negative force and in the form of something that we’re meant to put our faith into, like religion. But despite this, all I wanted was a good detective story. I wanted a movie that could sit alongside its contemporaries like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en but the story just didn’t deliver. Perkins didn’t seem interested in telling a detective story as all the moments where problem solving needed to occur was simply glossed over to rush us to the demonic finish line.