Another week brings another horror movie by an enormously talented filmmaker that is almost certain to disappoint most audiences. Glass half-empty: Gimme fully realized classics! Glass half-full: filmmaking is difficult, and the price of classics is often “growing pains” projects that give an artist his or her sea legs. Filmmaking is no different from playing the guitar or going to the gym or writing: work is required to emerge from the chrysalis.
Brian de Palma is the master of the modern American horror thriller, but have you seen his 1976 film “Obsession?” Trite and hokey, and yet it was the bridge between the lean and feral “Sisters” and the lush “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill,” and “Blow Out.” For those latter films, “Obsession” is a minor toll to be paid. If time revealed Ti West’s “MaXXXine” and Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs” to be preambles to amazing strings of successes, I wouldn’t be surprised. These guys appear to be so close.
Like “MaXXXine,” “Longlegs” is an overture from its relatively obscure creator towards reaching a larger populace. Perkins, son of Anthony, has previously directed “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House,” two spare and beautiful gothics that reveal the director to be confident with evoking dreadful atmospheres. “Longlegs” benefits from this confidence, particularly in its first 45 minutes, as Perkins layers menacing soundscapes over fraught, existentially empty images. The first scene of the film is actually its scariest, with off-kilter jump cuts that suggest a supernatural menace hiding in plain sight.
The images in “Longlegs” have a sense of the uncanny. Perkins can hold a shot of a suburban landscape long enough to lead you to wonder what you’re missing among the shadows and nooks and crannies. A valuable skill in the horror genre is the ability to make the audience ponder the thin and porous line between normalcy and a maw of chaos. Perkins, with his art-film tricks — shifting aspect ratios, jump cuts, long, languorous fades, grainy cinematography — shows not only an interest in pondering this line but a facility for doing it, and for that alone he bears keeping an eye on.
And yet the script that he’s written here is disastrous: Perkins the screenwriter is in the way of Perkins the supernatural visionary. The film is yet another serial killer thriller, which are growing exhausting, and it’s another gumbo of occult pastiche right after “MaXXXine” just last week. Think “Manhunter” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” both of which are liberally quoted here, with a twinkle of “Angel Heart” and a heavy varnish of the suburban malaise of films like John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” Perkins doesn’t quote-mark his references the way that West does; which is refreshing yet leaves him unguarded for when his pilfering doesn’t pan out, which is often.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is essentially Clarice Starling from “Lambs,” a rookie with family demons who is thrust immediately into a lurid case. There is a bizarre series of murders in which families are killed by the fathers, who then kill themselves, apparently under the influence of Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), a mysterious architect of murder. There are also shades of Scott Derrickson’s underrated “Sinister” here, come to think of it. Harker and her superior, Agent Carter (Swift Creek Mill Theater alum Blair Underwood), re-open the cases, and Harker’s influence kick-starts a flurry of new evidence and revelations that make almost no sense.
What if Hannibal Lecter had Satan on speed dial? That’s the idea here, and Perkins spends a lot of time putting it across. There wasn’t much plot in Perkins’ previous films, but “Longlegs” is dressed up with convoluted narrative malarkey that suggests a desire to abide by the one-reveal-after-another plotting of a pop movie. The problem is that Perkins hasn’t figured out how to pay off his set-ups yet. Harker is said to be a psychic, and a few scenes are devoted to this concept only for it to go … nowhere. There is an elaborate numerical explanation for how Longlegs chooses his victims that goes less than nowhere. Harker proves to be capable of decoding Longlegs’ letters, which … doesn’t matter either. An overwrought scene with a survivor of a Longlegs killing, played by Kieran Shipka, reveals itself to be beside the point. A dead end or two isn’t a big deal, most great thrillers have them, but “Longlegs” is a graveyard of loose and pointless ends.
“Longlegs” is meant to be a mood piece, which is its strong suit, but Perkins keeps distracting and frustrating us with his plot. I haven’t gotten to the dolls and the metal balls and Harker’s mother, who is played by Alicia Witt, a talented actress, in the worst performance of her career. I have gone on the record many times about my devotion to Nicolas Cage, but his maximalist performance-art shtick is all wrong for a film that’s thirsty for grounding textures. Caked under prosthetics and kabuki make-up, and adopting a fey whisper of a voice, Cage is supposed to be iconic, but all you can see is the fake cosplay of a self-consciously realized “movie monster.”
Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” and Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” each taken from a superb novel by Thomas Harris, are on paper only slightly less ridiculous than “Longlegs.” But Mann and Demme have a skill for blending reality and fantasy in a way that most contemporary filmmakers can’t seem to grasp. Hannibal Lecter is an only-in-the-movies monster to end all only-in-the-movies monsters, but the killers that the FBI investigators are chasing in his periphery hauntingly suggest real people. This is especially true of Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” who is played by Ted Levine in a committed, poignant, and surprising performance that continues to be taken for granted. Anthony Hopkins is fun as Lecter, whom he plays as a James Bond villain, but Levine feels uncomfortably human.
Or take the FBI offices in “The Silence of the Lambs,” which are bustling with employees, ringing phones, meetings, and the like. The setting is buzzing with life. Meanwhile, the offices of “Longlegs” suggest well-lit movie sets and appear to be populated only by the characters that matter to the plot. On day one, Agent Carter invites Harker out for drinks, gets hammered, and introduces her to his family, not for any legible human reason but because the climax that’s detectable an hour in advance requires it. I know that I’m on the verge of pettiness, but verisimilitude is valuable as a tool of bewitchment, and when you’re bored you notice small things. Give us an F.B.I. office that suggests an actual office, and a bureau chief that suggests an actual bureaucrat, and we’ll believe that Lecter can fashion a Halloween mask out of a prison guard’s face. Even fantasy requires common sense.
Modern horror movies have a pastiche problem. I’m not talking about just the reboots and sequels and reboots of sequels and sequels to reboots — they’re obvious. I’m talking about the fact that even smart and hip filmmakers seem interested only in riffing on other movies, and they are often desperate to tackle any subject matter that allows them to avoid the present day. Yes, modern filmmakers’ heroes, like de Palma and John Carpenter, were often accused of the same myopia in their prime, but they used old movies as a route towards acknowledging the anxieties of their own generation. Directors like Ti West and Oz Perkins are acknowledging a deep modern anxiety inadvertently, one which unites “MaXXXine” and “Longlegs” with all the other nostalgia trends that have been resurfacing: a fear of the present day in its entirety.
“Longlegs” is now in theaters everywhere.
