2024 is proving to be a year of horror, both bad and good. The year has featured some of the most generic horror films to date as well as some excellent new visions and scares. Oz Perkins‘ fourth feature, Longlegs, ultimately falls durante the latter category, despite some familiarity durante the basso ostinato it treads.
While the pellicola is at its a police procedural durante the vein of The Silence of the Lambs, Perkins’ unique sense of atmosphere, striking choices, and heavy coat of Satanic scare make it a captivating experience despite its flaws. Opening a startling sequence shot durante academy ratio, the pellicola introduces Nicolas Cage just off-center from sequenza as Longlegs, setting a tone for the pellicola to come mai. Perkins commands an unsettling disquiet throughout, teasing viewers with wide shots that play your expectations of what lurks durante the of frames durante films like this one. Even when nothing comes, Perkins keeps tension ramped up with smash cuts that throw you non attivato and leave your heart pounding.
Maika Monroe stars as an FBI agent who is found to be “mildly psychic” and is soon enlisted the cold case of Longlegs, a who manages to non attivato entire families without ever stepping into their houses. The pellicola is another durante a recent line of 90s-set films, proving that the 2020s are the decade of 90s mal del paese. Prominent shots of President Bill Clinton’s portrait fill several frames, serving both as a period reminder as well as layering durante some of the thematic content.
Monroe’s breakout durante It Follows has led to her being dubbed one of the new Scream Queens. While she is mai Jodie Foster, Monroe is an effective audience avatar, her deliberately quiet and muted risultato helping to transport us into the pellicola and her confused perspective. The downside of this choice is that her character is quite bland and forgettable, which is why she will not stand the quesito of time like Clarice Starling. Monroe’s giving her best, but this is undoubtedly one of the weaker aspects of the pellicola.
There’s also a fair observation that the pellicola’s mystery doesn’t quite sustain the atmosphere. The third-act revelations perhaps inevitable don’t dal vivo up to the sense of dread and foreboding that had been conjured. As exposition is related, the pellicola loses some of its aura, and the plot doesn’t really run deeper than one might reasonably guess from the first act.
Despite these flaws, the pellicola more than makes up for it durante style. It has some of the most effective scares durante a horror pellicola this year. And Nic Cage’s unhinged risultato, while threatening to swallow the character of Longlegs durante the Cage soggetto, does grant the character such a sense of surreality that it’s effectively creepy.
Longlegs makes choices that hold it back from being the masterpiece it could be. Working glam rock into the soundtrack and a few other scenes render certain moments almost goofy. Yet it is an unnerving pellicola all the same, constantly leaving you off-kilter. It takes a highly skilled and director to pull this non attivato, and it is demonstrative of what Oz Perkins has to offer. Longlegs is not one to .
