A haunting, half-remembered incident from childhood resurfaces in “Longlegs,” Osgood Perkins’ 1990s-set film about a young FBI agent whose past appears to hold the key to a decades-long serial killer ring in suburbia.
In the opening flashback scene of “Longlegs,” a little girl walks out of her house to meet a stranger in her snow-covered yard. We don’t see more than the lower half of his face, but the creepy feeling is overwhelming. The image cuts away with a scream before “Longlegs” can properly begin.
Twenty-five years later, that girl is now grown up and drawn into the investigation. She is exceptionally good at decoding the serial killer’s choreographed targets, but her psychological shrewdness has a blind spot. In Osgood’s entertaining but trite horror film about an elusive boogeyman, the most disturbing mystery is the hazy, fragmented nature of childhood memories.
“Longlegs,” which hits theaters Thursday, is riding its own wave of mystery thanks to a long, mysterious marketing campaign. Is the buzz justified? That depends on how well you tolerate a very serious procedural film that’s supremely adept at creating a horrific slow-burn, yet also leads with a plethora of horror stories: Satanic worship, creepy dolls and a bizarre Nicolas Cage.
It’s to the credit of the haunting and mesmerizing story of the first half of “Longlegs” — and of Monroe — that the film’s third half disappoints. After that prologue — presented in a boxy proportion with rounded edges, as if viewed through an overhead projector — the screen widens. Harker, a laconic, solitary detective, is part of a large task force to track down the killer behind the murders of 10 families over the course of 30 years. Sent to knock on doors, she looks up at a second-floor window and instantly recognizes him. “It’s him,” she tells a companion whose lack of faith in her own intuition soon proves regrettable.
Harker is brought in for a psychological evaluation that demonstrates his strange clairvoyance. Agent Carter gives him all the accumulated evidence, which points to a single killer – a coded letter signed by the Longlegs is left at each murder scene – but does not point to any intruders inside the homes of those murdered at the time. Carter is reminded of Charles Manson. “Manson had associates,” Harker reminds him. Also disturbing: All of the victims have a daughter whose birthday is on the 14th of the month, a trait that Harker, naturally, shares.
Family is also prominent in the story. Harker occasionally visits her estranged mother and their brief conversations reveal that she realizes the cruelty of the world. Once over the phone, Harker tells her that she is busy with “work work.”
“Dirty thing?” the mother asks. “Yes,” she replies.
Creepy scenes follow as they search for the killer in rural Oregon. They often visit the usual places: an old crime scene, a closed barn, an old witness in a psychiatric hospital. Longlegs is also wandering around, and leaves a letter for Harker. We see him for a fleeting moment first. He is a blond, pale man with long white hair, and the closer we get to him, the more clownish he looks. If Manson was of the ’60s, Longlegs, with his Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue white face, seems a product of the ’70s. The T.Rex opens and closes the film and the album cover of Lou Reed’s “Transformer” is propped up on his mirror.
Perkins is the son of filmmaking icon Anthony Perkins, who played one of movies’ most disturbing characters in “Psycho’s” Norman Bates. The roots of “Longlegs,” which Perkins also wrote, have personal ties for the director, Perkins has said, to his own upbringing and his father’s complicated personal life. But there’s something else that “Longlegs” struggles to penetrate. It feels like its sense of horror comes primarily from something other than other films. “Seven” and “The Silence of the Lambs” are obvious touchstones. Longlegs ultimately feels like a stock boogeyman and a big-screen vehicle for Cage.
In any case, this is Monroe’s movie. Her compelling screen presence in films like “It Follows” and “Watcher” has earned her the title of today’s finest “scream queen.” But she’s more than a single-genre talent. Again and again in “Longlegs,” Monroe’s Harker confronts a singularly disturbing scenario and walks right in. It’s not that she isn’t nervous; her heavy breathing is part of the artful sound design by Eugenio Battaglia. Monroe, resolute and strong, cuts like a knife in this almost cartoonishly grim movie. Sordid stuff? Yes.
“Longlegs,” a Neon release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for bloody violence, disturbing images and some language. Duration: 101 minutes. Two-and-a-half stars out of four.
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