*Caution — there are spoilers!
Yo. The hype for this movie was unreal. Same thing as Skinamarink: crazy scary promos and trailers. Intense, to say the least. Longlegs has only been out a few days, but I know this will be talked about for the rest of the year.
It will be talked about because it is part of the never-ending “overhyped or not” train that horror movies are plagued with nowadays. As I noted before, Longlegs was massively hyped and had an outstanding marketing campaign to boot. With cryptic Zodiac-style messages, phone calls, a dummy website detailing the decades-spanning “Birthday Murders” in Oregon, heartrate monitors, and the promise of Nicolas Cage as the terrifying titular serial killer, there was no way this movie would go unnoticed.
And it certainly got what it bargained for. Longlegs made back its $10 million budget (doubled it, actually) its opening weekend. It is hailed as the newest in crime thrillers, sitting pretty with the likes of The Silence of the Lambs and Zodiac. But the thing is, Longlegs was only 99% there for me.
It’s not enough for me to be told a movie is scary and see audience reactions proving it; I pretty much only watch horror, and I know audience reactions can be manipulated and not exactly indicative of how a horror fanatic like me would view a movie. Longlegs had everything going for it though. The marketing was phenomenal (I cringed at hearing Mr. Cage breathe through my phone speaker). The aesthetic of the trailers was everything I could have wished for (and absolutely frightening, to boot). BUUTTTTTT…
Longlegs changed from a realistic crime thriller to a more spiritual, magical one. Basically, Longlegs (the serial killer) used Satanic power — like, literally the Devil — to kill families through dolls. The families all have 9-year old daughters. Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) as the main character has psychic powers (this I can kind of get behind, since gut feelings are a thing). It’s just… it went from something as real and raw as the Night Stalker documentary to basically any nun movie today. I was primed and ready for piles of crime scene photos (and did get some) but ended up with a big pile of black spirit steam and shadows of a horned demon in the background.
Which isn’t a bad thing at all, I just wasn’t expecting it. Like I said, Zodiac and Silence of the Lambs were the two films it was being measured up against, but Longlegs took a little left at the end. Sure, we can have a Satanic-inspired murder spree, but what is the deal with the dolls? What was the purpose of the inverted triangle of murders, especially when Harker wasn’t even the first one; she clearly wasn’t necessary at all since we got more kills before and after her. What was the purpose of the black mist? Harker seemed fine when her doll got smashed. It’s just too farfetched to enjoy it as I wanted to. I even watched Longlegs a second time to try and find things I missed the first go-around. I was left with so many questions though, things that were unexplained that would have made all the difference.
Longlegs is a great movie, I just thing it was slightly mis-marketed. I was constantly looking in the background for moving figures. I was clenching up my face and trying to keep from covering my ears at points. But they lost me with the Devil stuff; I almost could imagine the murders being real — that’s how good this was. If I had known it would lean towards the dark arts, I would have been more prepared for that aspect and matched my energy toward it. Go see Longlegs for the ambiance and the first half, but know it’s not based in reality like people make it out to be.
What did you think of Longlegs? Let us know in the comments!
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