MIRLVNV

An investigative thriller that becomes personal.

**This review contains spoilers. TL;DR: I liked it. Worth the watch.**

I walked into the theater with my heart racing already. The marketing for the film LONGLEGS (dir. Osgood “Oz” Perkins) was good– almost too good. After watching the multiple teasers on various social media like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter (or, “X”, but you will never catch me calling it that) and the trailers NEON set out months in advanced on Youtube, I was unable to figure out the potential plot of this movie. Each trailer seemed to confuse me more than the one before. But THAT is exactly what drew me in like a moth to a pure, white, Nicholas Cage-faced flame. I knew I HAD to watch this film as soon as I could.

The scares started immediately. They aren’t the typical jumpscares that we may be used to like the Exorcist or the Conjuring but it was still frightening. As someone who is not a typical horror fan, I felt that this movie was not something that would give me nightmares like the aforementioned films. This film begged me to stare at it. To think about it. It was a film about how evil people can be– and how evil we can be to protect the ones we love.

Actress Maika Monroe plays Lee Harker, a FBI agent, a reserved and observant woman that always seemed to have her mind elsewhere. From the start of her assignment on the case, we were no stranger to her atypical behavior. (She was able to identify a house that holds a murderer just based off of shear intuition!) Due to her skills, her boss, Agent Carter starts Lee’s on the Longlegs case (a serial killing spree that has spanned over twenty years by a person who named themselves “Longlegs”). Maybe she could see something that nobody else was able to– and she does. Upon her investigation, Lee reawakens traumatic memories from her own childhood and finds she was a target of Longlegs. She contacts her mother, Ruth, about that incident which occurred on her 9th birthday.

Longlegs, the murderer played by Nicholas Cage, is one of the antagonists of this film. From his first sighting we knew that Longlegs (civilian name: Dale Cobble) was deranged; he was oddly dressed, seemed to be caked in a weird white powder (which probably stems from his fascination of the color white that we find out later in the film) and does not give straight answers. He is a Satanist that works for the devil by crafting dolls that are imbued with Satan’s essence. They are given to families as gifts from “the church.” Once gifted, the father in the family is swayed by Satan’s influence and murders their entire family and themselves. But it’s not just any family– each family involved has a daughter with a birthday that falls on the 14th of the month. (Probably has something to do with Longlegs’s reference to 13:1 Revelation. 13+1=14. I’m no math whiz, though.) This has been the pattern for decades– and only Lee was able to figure it out.

Lee determined that based on the execution of the murders, Longlegs could not be a singular person. The major twist in the film is that Ruth, Lee Harker’s mother, is the accomplice to Cobble. Ruth explained that she decided to help Cobble with his Satanic mission in exchange for her daughter’s life when she was targeted all those years ago on her 9th birthday.

Unfortunately, after many hints in the film, Agent Carter’s own family is targeted. Ruth, still playing the part of the accomplice, delivers a doll to the Carter family. Lee manages to save Carter’s daughter but Agent Carter, his wife, and Ruth dies in the process.

We end with a long look at Lee as she pointed her gun at the doll gifted to the Carter family. She didn’t shoot. Lee just guided Carter’s daughter out of the house and the film ends with clip of Longlegs saying “Hail Satan” and blows a kiss.

During the film, I felt there were some choices that I felt were predictable and cliche, like the conversations with Ruth over the phone. During the first conversation with Lee’s mom, there was a detail given to the audience about Ruth that made me immediately connect some dots. Ruth says that Lee can always talk to her about work even if it’s gruesome because she was a nurse for over 8 years. This set off the I-am-conveniently-skilled-enough-to-be-a-murderer-and-know-how-to-avoid-getting-caught-because-of-my-job alert system in my brain. (We all have those, right?) Additionally, Ruth’s tone of voice was just… odd. It felt like she was trying too hard to look the part of a retired normal mother. Unprompted, Ruth constantly telling Lee to “say her prayers” because they “protect us from the devil” was also a tell-tale sign for me.

Next, I want to talk about Lee’s “intuition.” Agent Carter even jokes that she seems “half-psychic,” which I think is actually true. I believe her intuition was actually a psychic ability she gained since she was technically still linked with the satanic doll. Cobble also mentioned to Lee that the doll helped to “guide her” to the right places and find the right answers.

Additionally, we don’t see much emotion from Lee other than fear throughout the whole film whether it’s fear for her life, her mom’s health, speaking with her boss, or speaking in general. When she sees gory images like dead bodies it seems to bother her slightly but she can’t muster up a face other than her usual worried face. However, when her doll is destroyed, that’s the first time I can remember showing her emotions. She screaming in pure bewilderment as she drive to Carter’s house. At the house, she cries with tears rolling down her face as she shoots Carter and her mother. I love this subtle shift in character.

Another favorite part: when Lee saves Agent Carter’s daughter and points her gun at the doll, she doesn’t shoot. Or does she? It’s unclear if she tried to shoot and there weren’t anymore bullets in the chamber, if she decided not to shoot the doll at all, or if the gun was somehow interfered with by Satan’s will to protect the doll. It is an interesting thought. Personally, I believe that she wasn’t sure what to do either. What are the rules here? When Lee’s doll was destroyed, it seemed to give Lee her full mind back. Will it do the same for Carter’s daughter? Did it do the same thing in the first place? There are just so many questions that are left about this that I feel she made the right choice in not doing anything to the doll and just prioritizing getting the little girl out of there. This feels like her humanity is back. She made a choice on her own judgment without feeling swayed by another party like Satan or the FBI. (Now– that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked to see what happens next, I think I would have like to know what she did to protect the daughter afterwards.)

You may have noticed that I said Longlegs was only one of the antagonists. I feel we have three antagonists in this story: Cobble, Ruth, and Satan himself. Satan’s presence is what is so scary about this film. Despite Cobble being, you know, insane, he wasn’t wrong. He proved to this universe that the devil is real and he was just a henchman.

Satan seemed to corrupt Ruth enough to reject her own religion and humanity. Of course, Ruth started because she wanted to save herself and Lee, but you can’t deny that she ends up enjoying this process in the end. During the explanation of her motives, she smiles as she walks away from another family that has fallen victim to Longlegs. She even denounced prayers once Lee confesses that she never did her prayers, not even once, because they scared her (this may also have something to do with Satan slightly inhabiting her body, but I digress). A God-fearing woman would never say prayers don’t do a “Goddamn” thing. But all of this is just the work of the man downstairs, Satan.

Some smaller things that I noticed during the film was the amazing production design! I love a nice, dressed set. I notice a couple of hints in the PD that made me giggle to myself. One was in Ruth’s house. Lee walks to her mom’s room and we see a dolls head that looks incredibly similar to the ones that Cobble creates.

Also, in Carter’s daughter’s room, there’s a picture of birds hanging on top of her bed. There’s also a hand-drawn picture of a bird hanging on top of Lee’s bed in her childhood room as well.

I loved the use of the aspect ratios when we were looking at the past versus the present. Visually, it gave a nice contrast to cement in the audiences’ mind the backstory and the present. The camera angles were another captivating part of the film. I felt most of the time that I wasn’t experiencing her pain or fear– I was simply watching it. A bystander. I think we were put in the perspective of Satan himself just watching as all the pieces come together. Satan was not the one creating the dolls or murdering the families; those were actions taken by the characters in the film themselves for him. I can’t remember insert shots of her eyes or many over the shoulder shots or even close-ups when she was panicking or stressed until the ending. The choices in camera movement and shots were excellent to create this effect.

The film had set ups that were eerie and there were a couple of jumpscares, but it didn’t reflect the same horror the trailers made it out to be (which I’ m not actually too mad at as I’m easily scared by horror films). The short montages of the past murders or the Satanic imagery served the same purpose of the jumpscares. They were abrupt and shocking images to make us uncomfortable.

Overall, LONGLEGS was entrancing. If you’re looking for a film that will keep you finding more and more with each watch, this is a great pick.

My rating: 8/10

Would watch again 💯