There is a common safety technique: when entering a new space, people are advised to identify all entrances and exits for a quick escape in an emergency. In movies, during a conversation or a scene with a simple frame, the audience will let their eyes wander to look at the scene around the character and possibly the extras that may be walking around. What may sound like two very different subjects is through that exact lens that the movie Longlegs is viewed through, a lens of pure anxiety and terror for what exists unfocused in the background or just beyond the frame. 

In the 1990s FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) has been tasked with catching a notorious serial killer simply known as Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). Longlegs has been tied to the killings of multiple families where they have left a coded letter with only Longlegs inscribing it. Left behind at each scene is no DNA, no forced entry, and no signs that anyone has been there besides the family. As Lee dives deeper into her investigation she becomes more and more convinced that Longlegs may be stalking her and as the case begins to intensify the question becomes, how long have they been watching her?

Everyone by now remembers the exact feeling of abject horror when they first noticed Toni Collette’s mother’s character in Hereditary looming in the corner of the ceiling hiding in the darkness and watching helplessly as Alex Wolff’s character is silently stalked with him being none the wiser. Longlegs with the way it frames characters with open doors and dark hallways behind them and its constant use of sound that is outside the current frame created an entire 100-minute experience out of that feeling. An unrelenting sense of danger that is established twice in the first 10 minutes grips the audience and refuses to let go.

By now anyone who has seen the trailers knows that Nicholas Cage plays the titular Longlegs, a satanic cipher-loving serial killer which sounds like the typical wild role that we have come to expect of him but he has done something truly special with this role. Sure the Cageisms that we have come to expect are there, but at its core Nic is downright haunting in this role. With the prosthetics he wears in the film he is unrecognizable and aside from some scenery chewing the character sounds nothing like the Nic Cage we know and love becoming a sinister predator. At a secret screening at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, Nic would say that he would like to apologize to his mother because he put a lot of her into his performance. If that is true that is the story that the world needs to hear and explains much about the actor.

Everyone loves a horrific antagonist, but often a good antagonist is only as good as their protagonist and Maika Monroe is giving a spectacular performance. Throughout the film, Lee Harker is accosted by the horrors that exist just outside the frame and her peripheral vision but she never feels powerless or weak. Maika performs as a confident unstoppable heroine who is capable of catching this serial killer even as the world begins to bend and flex with the mysterious powers that seem to be puppeting these murders. Through all her trials and tribulations I could see Lee Harker working alongside the equally traumatized and tenacious  Clarice Starling.

Every year there is a horror movie that is touted as the “scariest movie of the year” or even “scariest movie of the decade” or the horror movie that “changed everything”. Usually in early previews, this is how a movie is praised and when it hits general audiences the film is lucky to survive the hype because it has been built up so much. What can be said about Longlegs in pure honesty is that it is a haunting movie, a movie that feels dangerous, that is doing things that I have not seen in horror or thriller. I have never spent so much of my movie-watching experience scanning the frame and looking for the danger because I feel like these characters were not safe. Between the nightmarish Nicholas Cage performance of being a literal monster, the incredible sound design, and the cinematography, people will go in on the hype and leave raving about Longlegs.

10 out of 10