ↃL⊥\\Ↄ—\\ᘰ

 "MOMMY! DADDY! UNMAKE ME!! AND SAVE ME FROM THE HELL OF LIVING!!!"

  Like an entry wound bursting open, Longlegs starts with a bang and from there we tour a dark and wet cadaver until emerging from the exit wound bloody and confused, but at least T.Rex is playing.

Guided by a wicked command of anticipation with a torturous use of negative space, clever subversions of visual cliches, and paranoid pacing that only a stalker could instill, Osgood Perkins more than meets the hype NEON propped up for Longlegs: he shatters it. Due to that hype, I was ready for this movie to either knock me out or ruin my weekend but it actually managed to surprise me. It being an intensely spooky, moody, and doomy horror movie isn't surprising but what caught me off-guard was its wonderful comedic streak. I laughed quite a bit when I wasn't clenching my fists and my teeth.

  And it isn't funny as a calculated means to release tension, but, almost incidentally amusing, like there's never a good time to let your guard down. There's a deadpan wit with whiffs of camp during scenes of awkward socialization. That uncanny mixture is what makes Nic Cage's casting so perfect: he's just as funny as he is scary. Anytime I laughed at/with something he said or did, it was never without a nervous rattle in my throat. He occupies every single frame of this movie whether he's visible or not because of how Perkins builds an oppressive atmosphere but also because Longlegs himself is so memorable. Part of the marketing was in hiding his face and enticing you to come see it–even the first half of the movie obscures his full visage–so naturally my curiosity hooked me in. But whence he was fully revealed, I fucking HATED looking at him.

  Cursed with the kind of face that imprints on your eyelids, and not just because of the make-up layered on to make Cage unrecognizable, but because of how he brings it to life. He's currently squatting in the part of my brain that houses my other intrusive thoughts, cognitively summoning against my will, especially at night or when my apartment is quiet. His unique mode of sensorial eccentricity sticks like napalm; certain lines are burned into my tongue so when I'm stimming I'll blurt out his line deliveries like catchy song lyrics. He is an audio-visual parasite and I'm battling the inflections infection.

  There's hardly any solace to be found in Maika Monroe's Lee Harker, either. Watching her navigate this movie's disciplined momentum creates another sense of unease on top of what Cage brings to it. She plays Lee with a reserved propulsion, like a hummingbird that's been wrapped in duct tape, matching the movie's pacing with a stifled anxiety. It's an evolution of the performance she gave in WATCHER, upping her already remarkable game as a modern Scream Queen; There's a vulnerability to Lee without fragility and a toughness without stoicism. People have characterized Lee as a riff on Clarice Starling which is a slightly sexist misread. I see her as more in line with Will Graham (Hugh Dancy's, to be specific) as she's perceptive and clever with cursed third-eye insight. This kind of performance could easily dip into shifty, fidgety, eye-darting cliches but Monroe showcases a control of subtlety. Lee is also socially alien which is where more of the humor pokes through, especially as she gets these great—albeit short-lived—odd couple moments with her charismatic boss. Blair Underwood plays FBI director Carter with a familiar warmth and charm; He brings an affable Dadness to this horror movie about Fatherly madness until the case roils frustration and confusion out of him. His impatience feels the most like an unturned cliche that the script ever comes close to, until it becomes explicitly clear that the resolution to the case won't be grounded in reality.

  Refreshingly, LONGLEGS goes fully supernatural, there's no interpretative, allegory-pocked cop-out. Hell is downstairs and Satan is there under your feet. In an almost self-aware way, the eschewing of contemporary horror tendencies toward grief and trauma metaphors is baked into the narrative. Parents shielding their children from the Hell of living, trying to crystallize their innocence forever, is the real evil at the heart of this movie. With that said, there's a lot of minutiae and, I guess, lore, that I'm still unpacking (particularly the use of POV shots for the dolls). Perkins suggests so many different things without taking the whole curtain down. What remains shrouded demands a rewatch or two (or three or four or [...]).

  So is Longlegs scary? I mean, that's such a subjective term and I can't encompass every which way that people approach horror movies. What I got out of it certainly scared me because it clung to me. Yeah, there are some effective jumpscares that frightened me (coiled and clever in execution) but if you like emphatic terror, I don't think this is the movie for you.

  But if you like thick fucking dread forcing you to check over your shoulder, then you are the dark.