Longlegs (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Oz Perkins, like his style or not, only makes fascinating films. His latest, Longlegs, is an effectively disturbing and entertaining example of both what works best in his movies and what never quite lands with his stories. The Blackcoat's Daughter featured a puzzle box of a screenplay that never quite pays off but embraces its own stabs at time and place; I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House is indeed pretty and haunting to behold but feels generally inert; Gretel & Hansel fabulously attempts folk fantasy horror while gradually forgetting its own source material in favor of original, half-baked ideas. Perkins seems to get lost in his own head a lot as a writer, cleverly tinkering with his own ideas until they become difficult to absorb as the audience. Not that films should always explain themselves; it does help to have a few firm handles for us to grasp, though, so our discussions aren't solely attempts at interpreting basic symbols, characters, and themes.

I won't spoil the plot, but it's not what you think. Its most basic setup is not dissimilar to The Silence of the Lambs, but a young female FBI agent investigating a serial killer while using a possibly insane scary man in white as her informant is where the structural similarities stop. Visually and aurally, the film ramps itself up almost to the level of camp, with violent color shifts and bold, uncompromising choices of costume, makeup, cinematography, and scoring. Its exaggerated sensory experience feels matched by its performances, particularly its two leads in Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage: Monroe is unbearably stilted and forced (for a reason), while Cage is utterly transformed into a new creature (in which his typical overacting is somewhat muted and spectacularly stylized). There's a surrealist streak in Perkins's work, and this is as ripe as it's ever been.

A mildly exaggerated '90s setting -- refreshing in our era of endless fantasizing about the '80s -- belies the rich colors and stoic cinematography that provide our view into this strange and uncomfortable world. And even from the film's opening scene, Perkins and his editor craft a perverse dream logic that pervades our experience of the film, yes, but also of the story. This helps us understand Monroe's protagonist, Lee, a bit better, as she manages to correctly intuit and interpret clues from crime scenes, several of which reminded me of the real-life Zodiac killer, though her suggested pre- or extra-cognition is a bizarrely underdeveloped subplot. 

Which brings me to my issues with Longlegs: I just don't understand it. SPOILER ALERT. This is going to be a fairly random series of questions and thoughts on particular points of the film, and please feel free to comment your own ideas, because that's all we're going to get from a discussion of this weird movie.

- Lee's partner (Blair Underwood) near the beginning makes a reference to the Manson family right near the beginning that, fittingly, ties in to the reveal of Lee's mother's complicity near the end, but I didn't think the film would fully go that direction. In addition to the Zodiac killer and the Buffalo Bill/Hannibal Lecter references, Longlegs himself seems to have some Ted Bundy or Dracula or even the singer Tiny Tim in his performative DNA. The smorgasbord of serial killers seems to have been circulating in the filmmakers' minds to an unusually emphasized degree. 

- Lee's mother Ruth (Alicia Witt) always asks her if Lee has said her prayers; her ultra-religious identity isn't satisfyingly mined until the climax. It's unfortunate, because it seemed at first to be aiming for something akin to Carrie White's mother Margaret. Her revelation as the villain's assistant is shocking, maybe, but more emotionally sound than logically; the visual of her in a brown habit delivering enormous dolls feels ripped from another movie entirely. Perkins has gone on the record saying that this is his most personal film yet; one wonders the extent to which he feels his own mother was complicit in family secrets and generational trauma regarding his own father, Anthony Perkins, whose queerness was certainly kept hush-hush at home. It's telling, then, that Ruth suffers so much at the hands of Longlegs. (Also note that our introduction to Ruth is as she comes up the stairs, after taking too long to answer the phone, suggesting she spends time with Longlegs in the basement often.)

- Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) as a character would be fascinating to read. I suspect his dialogue has significance beyond what sounds like mostly random ramblings. A rewatch with subtitles will help, as I am sure all his dialogue in itself would reveal more about his character or motivations and probably clear up a lot of the confusion; it's just mostly hard to capture on a first viewing. The dialogue of the film in general is stilted and stylized, and I'd also love to see the strange monologue from Kiernan's Shipka's Carrie Anne (?) in her single scene, when she delivers super calm threats to Lee like a Pennywise on overdosed mood stabilizers: she'd be "as happy as peaches to watch your head go pop pop pop."

- What's with the intense use of red and white shots? What's with the almost subliminal shots of snakes in red light? What's with the unnecessary silhouette of a horned, robed Satanic shadow? What's with the metal balls in the doll heads, and what's with the black smoke that comes out of them? Other than the atmosphere of coloring, these elements don't add to the story as I understood it. The snakes might tie in to my next point, but a literalized devil takes away so much mystique of Longlegs's Satantic aspirations, and the dolls could have been possessed and evil without a sci-fi or fantasy element involved that used excessive effects to demonstrate something that should be merely implied at best.

- It seems Perkins, in addition to packing in references to other serial killers, imagined the nature of evil in this film to be a reverse trinity, a diabolic trio of Satan/dragon/red snakes/horned shadow man, Longlegs/Antichrist/Beast from the Sea (and the repeated verse about seeing him while standing on the sand of the sea), and Ruth/False Prophet/Beast from the Earth (she spreads Longlegs's message to others). Perhaps the dolls or metal orbs are the mark of the beast? Is this stretching too far? I'm not sure it is, given the references to the Book of Revelation, and of course the film's central themes (and, as Perkins indicated, his most personal theme) of a realization of hidden knowledge, with "apocalypse" and "revelation" both referring to that hidden knowledge being revealed or made known.

- Does the finale indicate that Lee herself will become the next Longlegs, as she does not (cannot?) destroy the doll? Remember that Longlegs -- who should be dead at this point in the story -- calls Lee to remind her of little Ruby's party. Longlegs is sort of Lee's director or mentor, having apparently orchestrated so much of Lee's life and manipulated her, even her psychic abilities. Lee has always wanted to be an actor, as she told Ruby early in the film. Longlegs later says he laughed when she became an FBI agent; perhaps because she was fulfilling his plan to investigate the killings and her own mother and have access to a gun to enact murders of her own (including Ruby's family -- Lee's partner and his wife -- as well as her own mother? Does she "become" him? Remember, too, that his final words to her before killing himself are "Well, I'll let you get started now."

- Other possible themes might include truth being hidden by corrupt faith, the nature of faith itself and the lengths to which we go to live it out, outing evil parents or how parents' actions will infect their children through life. There's also an interesting parallel between the film, Lee, and us. Perhaps we're meant to learn a lesson about getting too caught up in symbols and imagery and narrative and meaning while missing the big picture or emotional truth of art. 

A film like this will launch hours upon hours of social media rants and "ending explained" videos and TikToks of people puking their opinions and interpretations, and maybe that's fine and dandy for the studio and for the film's circulation. But shouldn't a film be worth that hype and interest? I'm not convinced this one deserves its buzz. Perkins is always worth watching, as his control over tone and mood and atmosphere is bleak, his violence is brutal, and his rich themes are complex and not at all obvious. This film is fabulously entertaining and hard to shake after viewing, but when any given detail requires footnotes and references and time stamps and mansplaining and obscure tie-ins and niche techniques and arthouse logic and video essays to even understand some possible interpretations, I can't help but feel the artists did a disservice to their own work by not being specific enough. Clearly there was intention in every aspect of bringing this story to the screen; too bad nobody can wholly access it.

Significant Other (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Another low-budget horror movie dropped unceremoniously on streaming (Paramount+), Significant Other is a pretty slow, familiar film that probably won't pique much interest from casual viewers. This, in my opinion, is the immense danger of direct-to-streaming releases. But for those who like the leading actors or the concept, or just want an old fashioned 90-ish-minute parable, Significant Other has boons in unexpected places. It won't land on any Top Ten lists of the year, but it capably and satisfyingly accomplishes what it sets out to do, which seems to be to scare us of the deep dark woods, of body snatching alien monsters, and of the dangers of committing to the person you love.

Ruth and Harry have been together for six years but remain unmarried. The film starts with them going on a camping trip in the Pacific Northwest, something Harry has long wanted to do together. Their dynamic is warm and comfortable, though Ruth seems to harbor significant anxiety. It helps that they're played by attractive and eminently likable young stars Maika Monroe (It Follows, The Guest, Greta, Watcher, Mark Felt) and Jake Lacy (Being the Ricardos, Obvious Child, Carol, Miss Sloane, The White Lotus), playing heavily into their interpersonal chemistry. When Harry proposes marriage to Ruth, she rejects him, accusing him of changing their relationship with labels when they had apparently previously agreed not to get married. She's got some baggage to unpack regarding traumas in her past and her parents' failed marriage, and the little blue pills she pops regularly don't seem to be enough.

Their fight is tense, both because of the raw emotions and because they are now stuck in the wild together in a disappointed, less-than-romantic headspace. The gloomy, rainy forest seems aptly chosen as the setting for their miserable trip, and as they hike, Ruth in particular seems to be aware that they are not alone in the woods. She glances around, curious and hesitant, staring into the space between trees as if willing an escape route to manifest. But when they discover a dead deer, covered in dark slime, her fears multiply. Shortly after investigating a cave in the forest, she tells Harry she has reconsidered his proposal and wants him to ask again; it's such an abrupt about-face that we're almost as shocked as Harry. They trek back to the scenic overlook site but, instead of accepting his proposal, Ruth pushes him off the cliff to his death.

I don't really want to spoil what happens afterward too much, but just know that there are indeed aliens and doubling that would make Hitchcock gleeful and weird reverse psychology that makes up the climax. It all reads a bit like a film student's master's thesis, but with a handsome budget for cinematographer and lead actors. It's not really "about" the body snatching or impending invasion (oops, maybe I'm spoiling things after all), as the heart of the film is very much with Harry and especially Ruth, who is forced to lean into her mental illness and disorders in order to combat the threat and survive. That, and with the concept of humans being the only sentient creatures in the universe who can love, makes the film's title a wonderfully clever play on the themes explored here. Significant Other serves some fascinating spins on worn-out tropes mixed into a glorified B-movie, and frankly it's a fine addition to your horror watchlist this or any year.

Watcher (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Hitchcockian in the best way, Watcher is the latest domestic thriller available on demand right now. The story concerns Julia, new to Bucharest and isolated by her ignorance of the language. She's disoriented and apparently lonely, as her Romanian husband is off working his new marketing job. Her possible paranoia is immediately clear to us in her introduction scene to their new apartment with its large picture window. Looking out at her neighbors across the way, she quickly notices a man staring at her. As the days progress, he tends to pop up in that window, looking right back at her. Is he lonely, too? Maybe, but there's a distinct menace to his presence, perhaps partly because we are not allowed to see anything of the interior of his apartment.

When I reference Hitchcock, I mean as in Rear Window, of course, and Dial M for Murder and Rope; this film also works hard to establish itself within the fairly recent trend of woman-led domestic thrillers such as The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, and the works of Gillian Flynn. Interestingly, this movie pretty much plays itself as seriously as it can, and also in an almost off-putting straightforward fashion. There's never really doubt that the creepy man across the way is, in fact, "The Spider," a serial killer known for beheading his female victims. There aren't a lot of police to create drama from shifting power dynamics or character conflict; there isn't a lot of drama to Julia or her husband, either. This is a stylized arthouse film that is almost too accessible for its own good in that there aren't wild plot twists or shocking character revelations. This is pretty much exactly what its synopsis implies.

Its seriousness isn't just in terms of its screenplay or performances, though Maika Monroe is chillingly economical in meting out her growing dread and discomfort. Director Chloe Okuno is so determined to get us in Julia's headspace that she often shoots in massive wide shots, working extra hard to isolate Julia in the dubiously oversized apartment, and in cold or bland light to smooth everything over and give the uncanny feeling of being institutionalized. Even the choices of colors -- Julia's red sweater and tights, for example -- feel intentional in a quiet but bold manner, suggesting sometimes thematic or character insights that might otherwise be absent from the screenplay (the red feels like the color differences in Psycho, where here we might suspect Julia's heated suspicions manifesting in her wardrobe, or even perhaps suspect that her lonely walks through town may not be as innocent as we first supposed. Long stretches of silence fill the cavernous visuals of this film, icily silencing the film's audience (or putting them to sleep, if this isn't your thing) into a pattern of baited breath.

As Julia begins to see the titular watcher around town -- even realizing, horribly, that he is certainly stalking her -- we begin to wonder if the title refers to him or to her. She is watching him just as much as he is watching her, if it's even him. We wonder why her husband isn't more disturbed about her concerns, but he plays it in a way that might suggest either deep misogyny (she's surely hysterical, being alone in a new place) or prior experience (she's unhinged by some mental illness or trauma he's seen before). It's not made clear by the film either way, but it allows us to feel, as Julia does, that she is very much on her own in this situation. I was reminded, too, of other films, like Charade and Gaslight and Repulsion and began to wonder if the husband was somehow implicated. But this film is, as I noted, much too straightforward for that. And, while there are indeed some frightening "action" scenes, this movie is brave enough to keep things vague, suggestive, realistic, and intensely psychological. Half the horror of this film is its active attempts to get us to think about what if and what might happen; when the threat is unmasked, it's not quite so scary. But it's still thrilling!

Greta (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

"Just try to get rid of Greta," she taunts. "Just watch me," we say on our way out of the theater.

In what was sure to be a fabulous resurgence of the psycho-biddy subgenre, Greta promised lots of things. Or at least its marketing campaign did. It promised a horror-comedy like we haven't seen in a while, a full-on camp spectacle with enough ick and eek to entertain for at least a couple hours. Unfortunately, the only thing that delivered on these promises was its trailer.

Isabelle Huppert gives a solid but totally misdirected performance as Greta, the crazed woman who leaves purses on trains around New York City, waiting for a kind soul to return one to her. That soul is Frances, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, whose utterly lifeless delivery makes you want terrible things to happen to her. Of course, it doesn't take long for their burgeoning friendship to get creepy as hell, and when it does you're already angry at Frances for being so incredibly stupid. Nobody does the smart thing here except Greta, and even she makes a few silly mistakes.

The problems here are manifold, but can be largely credited to writer/director Neil Jordan. In trying to make a bonkers thriller into a psychological horror-drama, he fails in crafting a fresh tone or even in having fun with the proceedings. Gruesome as the film occasionally can be, everything -- apart from Huppert's occasionally knowing extravagance -- is played straight and grounded, taken far too seriously for its own good. As a result, we aren't allowed to have any fun shuddering at the creepy old woman or giggling as people get abducted, tortured, and murdered. Instead, we try to keep up with the bizarre behaviors of everyone involved and waste time trying to understand why they're all so opaque.

And why on earth did they waste Colm Feore's talent like this? It's just criminal.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

In yet another curious multiple-feature that happened this year (after the three Wonder Woman movies and two Dunkirk movies), Mark Felt and The Post both tackled Nixon-era scandals. Perhaps this combination isn't quite so curious as it is timely, but what's interesting to me is that neither of these films attempt to re-create Nixon himself. Both utilize stock footage of the former president while dramatizing efforts by reporters and politicians and aristocrats and bureaucrats to bring down the administration. Mark Felt would pair well with All the President's Men, too, were you to brave an all-day marathon of political thrillers set in the early 1970s. These films together would be as fascinating as a marathon of Nixon movies; are double marathons a thing?

Unfortunately, Mark Felt alone isn't much to look at. Dismal and slow, it drones on much like Liam Neeson's voice, forced and gravelly. One would think that a film detailing the many secrets of one of history's most famed whistleblowers wouldn't be so anticlimactic, but here we are. It's as though writer and director Peter Landesman (Parkland, Concussion), so desperate to engage critically with those famed journalists Woodward and Bernstein, has either bitten off more than he can chew or thought so deeply about this period in history that he has made it almost inaccessible to viewers.

Besides the tossing around of names and titles like confetti, the screenplay doesn't inform us of some of the more important details of the story. And before you say "movies can show, not tell", I'm letting you know this movie doesn't show much beyond what it says. Everything is dimly lit in bluish lighting, making of course the mystery of "Deep Throat" enjoyable to watch if too atmospheric for its own good. While the huge ensemble cast gives some fine performances, I couldn't help but feel the varied storylines were individually terribly weak and unfocused. Diane Lane, for example, makes only a few appearances, despite her top billing, most of which take away drastically from the politically thrilling pacing of the movie. It's not her fault, mind, but it constantly left me wanting more.

Then again, there are a few surprising and exciting scenes that should be mentioned. Liam Neeson plays Felt like a sphinx, his silvery hair glinting with his eyes, a total enigma to his peers and his audience. He embarks on several small plot arcs, the first of which involves J. Edgar Hoover's death and the power struggle left in his wake. A later one concerns Felt's daughter (Maika Monroe), who has abandoned her family for a part in the counterculture; this comes as a shock, as Felt has spent most of the film and is eventually indicted for aggressive and illegal actions against counterculture groups. Of course, the real heart of the move lies with, well, the lies told between the FBI and the White House. When politicians start sticking their fingers in FBI investigations, Neeson's character gets righteously riled, and the hairs on my arms stood up thinking about America 2017.

Oh, and for heaven's sake, was the title really necessary? Just Mark Felt or even Deep Throat would have been better.

IMDb: Mark Felt

It Follows (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

I don't think I can provide accurate words to describe my love of It Follows. Easily the most cerebral horror film since Insidious (2010), and rather similar in terms of conceptual structure, It Follows takes old genre tropes and turns them on their heads. Without even a single wink to the audience (which we've come to expect from horror in the post-Scream years), this film re-works John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) into a supernatural suburban thriller that delivers with every shot. And director David Robert Mitchell frames each shot with such edgy immediacy that the whole thing quickly becomes a meditation on dread and anticipation.

Okay, I'm making a lot of claims and references here, so let's break things down a bit. It Follows uses a basic horror narrative in which our female protagonist is, well, followed by a supernatural being after having a sexual encounter. This being -- the titular "It" -- pursues its victim without speaking or changing pace, just infinitely walking in whatever direction it must. To complicate matters, it does not rest, and only its victim can ever see it approaching, though it can change its appearance and so look wildly different at a given time. There is apparently no killing this monster, though a target may transfer its attentions by having sex; immediately after doing so, this new person becomes the monster's new target. But the danger never passes, for if the monster kills its current victim, it will turn its violent attentions to its previous target, and so forth.

Are you following me? (Sorry, it's so hard to avoid these things.) So, besides this rather fresh and intriguing concept for our antagonist (that might be a little gimmicky, but, hey, it is a horror movie), as well as a plot that seems crafted to extend into a franchise, why is this film so important? Well, let's consider the sexual ethics of horror films in the last half-century. The sexual nature of villains and violence during the Hays Code was kept to a minimum (arguably pushed most by the 1960 genre-changers Psycho and Peeping Tom) until the Code's death in 1968. Horror filmmakers were finally able to give graphic images to their biting portrayals of culture, reaching an early peak with the still-controversial The Last House on the Left (1972). In most of the slasher films of the '70s, audiences saw young people choosing sex and drugs before being punished for these sins by unspeakable monsters.

Having seen this new, "millennial" meditation on these things, it only makes sense that it takes the next logical step in modern sexual ethics. We're not watching the wrath of God (or conservative parents) being enacted upon sinful teenagers; we're watching the horrific potentialities brought to a metaphoric reality. You can have sex with someone, but do you really know their reasons for having sex with you? Do you know what they might really give you in that intimate encounter? Will you choose to continue to spread the thing you contracted? And what if that thing returns in a week, a year, ten years in the future? Now I don't know about you, but it makes perfect sense to me to have a horror film about the sexual ethics of STDs. What is "It"? I don't know, but it's kind of hard to watch the movie and not think about a literal embodiment of an STD.

Why do I say it's a modern update of Halloween? Because Mike Myers and our "It" are silent stalkers who butcher their victims and apparently can't be killed. Because you might delay or hinder their progress but there's no guarantee they won't return. Because both take place in lovely suburban areas (one in Haddonfield, Illinois, and the other filmed near Detroit, Michigan) that strike at the hearts of most middle-class Americans. Just look at all the lovely sunlit sidewalks Jamie Lee Curtis strolls down, much like what we see repeatedly in It Follows, though here they are mostly shrouded by twilight. Oh, and if we're comparing films, I really think the score of this is damn good, and it seems to be a close translation of Carpenter's Halloween score in its own right. Of course, I say this is a "modern update", but It Follows is also strangely timeless. The characters use landlines to call each other, not cell phones. The climax takes place in an indoor pool, and we see generic (but older) televisions and lamps around it. The cars are nondescript, the houses aren't striking; point being: this isn't Gothic, it isn't 70s, it isn't really 2015, so what/where/when is it? My answer (and, I suspect, David Robert Mitchell's answer): Does it matter?

And all this is to say nothing of the film's technical excellence. Mitchell intelligently avoids gimmicks and grandeur with this low-budget thriller. He keeps the action as intimate and minimalist as the story and its villain, creeping along with steady pace that never reaches frenzy but never relents in its terror for even a moment. Longshots force the actors to face their own demons, and force us to share in the immediate sensations of fear and limited awareness. Case in point: Our protagonist wakes up from her Sex of Doom (can that be a thing?) tied to a chair, told that she has to witness what follows...literally. But the camera stays trained on her face as she is wheeled around, shown the monster, and frantically pushed away to safety. Another moment: Our protagonist escapes the monster in her house and flees to a wooded part at night. Her friends follow her there, but all we see (from her point of view) is their silhouettes walking toward her. In moments like these, we are never really sure if one of the people in the background is the monster. It's a simple solution that adds more atmospheric elegance to this film than all the computer-generated fog or shadows in any horror film of the last decade.

IMDb: It Follows