Oz Perkins' Longlegs and the Importance of Iconography
Oz Perkins' Longlegs opened wide this weekend and is the newest addition to the serial killer movie canon. A genre that seeks to guide the viewer through a hallway of despair littered with unsettling imagery on its walls. May it be David Fincher's se7en or his genre follow-up in Zodiac, or maybe something more antique and regal like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a serial killer movie with iconic images is always great, but is the converse true? Must a serial killer movie have great iconography to be lauded? Trying to answer questions like these is what makes Longlegs interesting for me. It feels like the movie most in touch and beholden to its genre since the aforementioned Zodiac, where horror lies in the constant feeling of dread.
The film's narrative is primarily seen through the eyes of Maika Monroe's Agent Lee Harker, a deeply asocial FBI agent with a natural intuition for investigation. This character trait is the first of many homages the film pays to the genre. Longlegs seems to use these narrative references to films such as Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder, Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs, and Fincher's se7en as a gateway for the audience to enter the film's narrative. These references are not mere nods to the past, but integral parts of the film's storytelling, enriching the narrative for those familiar with the genre's classics.
It tries to thread the needle of referencing to the audience about this very cool thing they remember seeing in other movies, but still maintaining an originality of its own. My issue with that can be categorized through a simple experience I recently had watching Jan De Bont's Twister, a film with a whole sequence set to the climax of The Shining playing in a drive-in-theatre. When you show someone watching something as iconic as The Shining in your movie, my first thought is, 'Well, I could be watching The Shining right now too,' completely pulling me out of the experience of watching the movie I was watching. So when you show a dead rotting corpse in a bed with maggots devouring it, my first thought is, 'Well, se7en was a pretty good movie, wasn't it,' and now I'm thinking about se7en, hoping to feel the same way I did while watching it. That reads an awful lot like a nitpick, but if you have small narrative homages to iconic films of the genre but never fully flesh them out in the movie, it makes for an experience akin to being kicked out of the restaurant after having nothing but the bread basket. So if it's a film that crosses every narrative i and dots every characters t is what you seek, Longlegs may leave you longing for more.
I have gone long enough without talking about Nicolas Cage's titular Longlegs (not a reference to his gait). The inspiration for this piece was the iconic imagery of the serial killer thriller genre, and while Neon may take a very practical approach of hiding Cage's appearance, showing you Maika Monroe's heart rate in the scene where she confronts him, and employing various other promotional tacts; Perkins takes a very different approach. Oz Perkins' intention with Longlegs the character--through what's in the movie and his interviews--is to de-iconify the villain as much as possible. Cage's Longlegs isn't presented with a distinguished accessory such as Hannibal Lecter's mask, nor does he possess some of the 'calm in the face of terror' charisma of Kevin Spacey's John Doe. Perkins shows a distaste for this recent Netflix docu-style trend of iconifying these extremely deranged, terrible people. So, does his movie succeed in this? Eh, maybe.
It's successful in a way that there is no charisma to lionize in the way of a Charles Manson (Mindhunter) or Ted Bundy (having Zac Effron play him) in recent Hollywood projects. There is none of that in Longlegs; he looks like a freak, and talks like a freak, and the only logical conclusion to draw from his presence in the film is that he is a freak. But despite all that, he's still highly effective at fulfilling his lust for murder in a way that the movie shows he still has a cultish following. It's a difficult balance to strike, having to show something completely contrasting with the message the creator is trying to send about the character. This constant contrast, mixed with the limited times we even see Longlegs on screen, the titular character is left as something the movie works despite.
However, the film is still a very cool horror movie because the dreary feelings that create the horror are not tethered to the presence of Longlegs on screen. It is at its most effective in the first hour when Oz Perkins' symmetric style of framing and blocking is omnipresent. Characters are shot in a way that we see a close-up of their face at a slight angle, with all the corners, doors, and windows in the background acting like a portal for a jump scare that may or may not come. This creates an indomitable sense of solitude, mixed with a feeling in the viewer and character's mind that they are constantly being watched. It might not always feel scary while sitting in the theatre, but it's nightmare fuel to think about alone in your car by the driveway. It's a kind of horror that sticks with you after the movie. What also works is Cage's performance, and it works for the same reason almost every Nic Cage performance works: the ability to accommodate the duality of audience reaction. If someone thinks he sucked, well, the character he's playing is supposed to be a loser. On the contrary, if his performance works for you, it might be the scariest thing you've seen. His talent to amplify the reaction to his performance at either end is why he effectively portrays outlandish characters.
As the movie progresses to its conclusion, it gets less scary, but oddly more profound. It balances having the third act being a massive expository dump, with few moments of genuine shock. Without delving into spoilers, there is an apparent difference between what the film is about (serial killer) and what it's trying to say. All in all, it's a fun experience to have, but my advice is to temper your expectations before you watch it. Longlegs is better than most of the stuff that has come out recently, but it's not as good as what its marketing bills it to be.