‘Longlegs’ Is a Stupid, Zero-Star Dumpster Fire

The film’s ponderous third act, in which everything comes together in a tsunami of delirium, is nothing less than moronic.

It’s summer, when multiplex marquees are bloated with hunks of junk. One learns, through experience, to expect mediocrity at the movies. What one does not expect is a load of total trash full of gimmicks instead of ideas, stolen scenes from other movies instead of originality, amateurish posturing instead of professional performances, clueless meandering instead of organized screenplays, and pointless confusion instead of clear-eyed direction. Every negative just listed is glaringly evident as part of the incomprehensible gibberish that makes a crummy horror flick called Longlegs not only the worst movie in the summer of 2024 but one of the worst movies of all time.

There is no plot, but basically, it centers on a rookie FBI agent named Lee, played by a charmless actress named Maika Monroe, and fashioned in the style of Clarice in Silence of the Lambs, played with much more force and individuality by Jodie Foster. Lee is also a psychic (duh) whose boss assigns her to the case of a mad serial killer called, for no explicable reason, Longlegs, who massacres entire families with daughters who have the same birthday as Lee. (You don’t need to have seen a dozen serial-killer movies already to know this means Lee is targeted for the next victim.) There is no mystery about Longlegs. Suspense wanes in the first scene, a sort of prologue to the rest of the movie, in which Lee dredges from her subconscious the memory of a horrifying childhood visit to her home by a creature called “Longlegs” who has some kind of relationship to her abusive single mother. Longlegs is played in drag by Nicolas Cage, replete with dresses, a raspy voice like a shrieking banshee, and a white wig that looks like a rat’s nest. He is also a Satan worshipper. (Double duh.)

While Lee busies herself forming clues in groups of numbers and deciphering codes, Longlegs is arrested, but before anyone at FBI headquarters can question him about his motives, he smashes his head to hamburger meat on an interrogation table. Teeth fly, blood splashes all over the room faster than the plot, and Longlegs dies, but the massacres continue. Lee’s mother heads the long list of red herrings as an eye-rolling religious nut who also has ties to the devil worshippers. (Say what?) None of it makes a great deal of sense, but it is relentlessly, constantly, savagely and intensely gory, gloomy and so mystifyingly preposterous that they seem to be making it all up as they go along. Longlegs is like a big gasoline fire, with a new match lit every minute. 

The ridiculous script and paralyzing direction are both by Oz Perkins, son of the late and versatile Tony Perkins. Considering the fact that he created one of the most memorable lunatics in screen history in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, you’d think some of his skill would rub off on his son. Sad to say, there is no evidence in the loopy Longlegs that Oz Perkins has inherited any of his dad’s understated cinematic abhorrence. To be charitable, he is careful not to reveal more at any time than Lee figures out for herself, and there is some style to the dark foreboding, but in my opinion, even a hair-raising creep flick needs logic, and this one has none. It is never clear what Longlegs’ motives are, what the supernatural undertones have to do with the serial killings, and even less with how and why the slaughters continue after Longlegs is dead. The best thing about the film is the grim lighting and camerawork, which set its ghoulish mood and never brighten its consistency. The worst thing is Nicolas Cage in his most hysterical, unhinged, over-the-top performance since he played Dracula like a vaudeville act. The film’s ponderous third act, in which everything comes together in a tsunami of delirium, is nothing less than moronic. In the end, you’re left asking more questions than anyone involved can (or will) ever answer.