Review of Long Legs - Pass on This Horror Flick

Longlegs, to me, was neither scary nor good. I have watched horror films on television since the 1960s, such as The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. I grew up reading Alfred Hitchcock's Presents hardcover oversized books. With friends, we went to movie double features for the original Godzilla vs. King Kong movies and Vincent Price and Ray Milland horror movies. I'm a Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub fan - it takes a lot to scare me. I might jump at a startling scene, but a scream won't leave my lips.

Initially, I had planned to see the movie in the theater but decided to wait, so I streamed it at home last night. My husband watched it with me.

The movie begins with a cold, wintery flashback scene of a car pulling up on the road. A small girl runs through the snow toward the car but stops when she hears eerie noises behind her. The girl then returns to the white farmhouse.

When the scene switches, it shows a new FBI female agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), having solved her first murder through a hunch. Her boss (Blair Underwood) wants to test her psychic abilities and has her watch various scenes in a dark room and call out what she sees; her answers made no sense to me about the visuals. It seemed similar to the Rorschach test, but what do I know? Her new boss is trying to figure her out, how she came up with her answers to the visuals, and how her "psychic" ability feels at a crime scene.

A serial killer is on the loose, with entire families being murdered, including small children. The father is usually the culprit, killing each of his family members in quite gruesome ways. The FBI has to find the killer or killers. Underwood's character, Agent Carter, wants Lee Harker to solve the murder and review the cryptic clues left behind. As she begins to review everything, it is similar to cop shows with the brilliant detectives who see clues no one else does. The killer has to be practicing the occult, or acting as the leader of a strange occult practice.

The scenes are filled with darkness, eerie howling, low camera shots, and flashbacks. Lee Harker keeps her emotions in check, never smiling and answering questions flatly. When she calls her mother, her tone is flat. "Hello, Mom?" Her mom asks if she is being good and reading her Bible. When we finally meet her mom, it is obvious she is a hoarder, and during the conversation, we discover why.

When the director reveals the Long Legs character, the face is not shown. That was the director's idea: make him look extremely tall to a child. The child first met Long Legs outside the farmhouse in the movie's opening scene.

Elsewhere, we get full-body shots of a very creepy person, in behavior and looks, played by who else, Nicholas Cage. Cage is praised for his bizarre acting, and he definitely outdoes himself here.

Absolutely unrecognizable in this movie, Cage is creepy and so ridiculous. In a scene toward the film's end, a ridiculous sing-song scene, so bad that I laughingly swore out loud. My husband groaned and left the room.

Cage overacts the macabre part. The Long Legs character has an accomplice the police are desperate to find. Once they capture the accomplice, Lee interviews him calmly, reminiscent of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. Maika Monroe is great as the FBI agent. The director did his best to create a dark, unsettling character, but it didn't work at all for me. I didn't find it scary, just weird. This movie is no Silence of the Lambs. It is no Night of the Living Dead. Long Legs doesn't come close to the frights in the Scream or Halloween franchises. Compared to those, it is laughable. Vincent Price was scary; Cage tried to be, but ended up as a caricature.

The movie ends with everything explained, but the explanation gives no satisfaction. The ending is as bad as the rest of the movie. Halfway through it, I figured out the accomplice. At best, Long Legs is groan-worthy, similar to the older Japanese Godzilla movies. What the director thought was suspenseful just made me want to yell "Get on with it!" Some people who prefer the gore of new horror movies might like it and have read about deep references to the director's motives. The movie is not very good. Actually, Long Legs is quite boring. Watch it if you want to see Cage overact as a creepy serial killer. See if you can figure out the accomplice. Go ahead, have a look. Just don't pay for it.

🦖🎥

Copyright © 8/17/26 by Andrea O. Corwin