Lon­glegs review – a har­row­ing ser­i­al killer thriller

One of the most hor­ri­fy­ing, heart-in-mouth moments in Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs comes when Clarice Star­ling is trapped in a pitch-black room with Buf­fa­lo Bill. We watch a ter­ri­fied Star­ling through the green and white glow of his night vision gog­gles as she scram­bles des­per­ate­ly through the dark­ness, as the killer slow­ly reach­es towards her. It’s a clas­sic ​“He’s behind you!” moment that owes much to the hor­ror sta­ples that pre­ced­ed it, but when Demme kills the score and posi­tions us as the killer, the sound of Starling’s pan­icked breath­ing ring­ing in our ears, it cre­ates a brand new sort of ter­ror. The moment lasts just under two min­utes but feels like it goes on forever.

Cre­at­ing this sense of dread isn’t easy faced with audi­ences who have seen it all, and Demme’s film has influ­enced count­less psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers since, includ­ing Osgood Perkins’ Lon­glegs, which also focus­es on a young female FBI agent on the trail of a psy­cho killer with an allit­er­a­tive mon­ick­er. In fact, it’s set in 1993 – just one year after The Silence of the Lambs was released. But unlike Clarice Star­ling, Lee Hark­er (dead­pan and frag­ile but steely-nerved, played by It Fol­lows Scream Queen Mai­ka Mon­roe) seems to pos­sess a latent psy­chic abil­i­ty – one that serves to alien­ate her from her peers at the bureau, still very much a boy’s club hav­ing only start­ed accept­ing female agents some 20 years ear­li­er. But her supe­ri­or Agent Carter (Blair Under­wood), a gruff but kind pater­nal fig­ure, recog­nis­es Harker’s tal­ent as well as her soli­tari­ness and attempts to take her under his wing as they track a mys­te­ri­ous ser­i­al killer leav­ing cryp­tic cod­ed notes signed ​‘Lon­glegs’.

This is where Nico­las Cage comes in, sport­ing a stringy blonde wig and cakey white make-up, speak­ing in high-pitched rid­dles. What should be car­toon­ish is effec­tive­ly dis­turb­ing, his air of clown­ery jux­ta­posed by the awful­ness of the rit­u­al killings and the aus­tere cool­ness of Andrés Arochi’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Perkins pays trib­ute to the rela­tion­ship between Star­ling and her adver­sary Han­ni­bal Lecter, though Lon­glegs is no serene mas­ter­mind – Cage’s per­for­mance has more in com­mon with Tom Noo­nan in Man­hunter than Bri­an Cox or Antho­ny Hop­kins. Lon­glegs is mere­ly a ser­vant of some­thing even more malev­o­lent that has been stalk­ing Hark­er her whole life.

While there are ele­ments of the super­nat­ur­al at play, the feel­ing of dread that per­me­ates the dark, snowy set­ting is all too human. Ali­cia Witt’s sup­port­ing turn as Harker’s dis­turbed, dis­tant moth­er is bone-chill­ing, while Kier­nan Ship­ka – who starred in Perkins’ debut The Blackcoat’s Daugh­ter – deliv­ers a remark­able per­for­mance as Lon­glegs’ only known sur­vivor, resid­ing in a psy­chi­atric facil­i­ty. There are many hall­marks of the psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror at play (a creepy killer, a trau­ma­tised sur­vivor, a par­ent with dark secrets) but under Perkins’ care­ful hand, the famil­iar feels unnerv­ing all the same, a puz­zle box drip­ping with bright red blood.

For­go­ing easy-win jump scares in favour of a sick­en­ing under­cur­rent of fear, Lon­glegs’ orig­i­nal­i­ty and bold­ness feel refresh­ing in an age of hor­ror fran­chis­es, spin-offs and sequels – this is shlocky strange­ness that throws back to the video nas­ties of the 70s with a grungy makeover that imbues the film with melan­choly. It’s become a recur­ring joke that mod­ern hor­ror films are all about trau­ma, but Perkins’ wise choice to root Lon­glegs in spe­cif­ic hor­ri­fy­ing truths – that a par­ent can be both lov­ing and atro­cious at the same time, and there is some evil in the world beyond expla­na­tion – means it side­steps the gener­ic, meta­mor­phos­ing into the most unset­tling psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror of recent mem­o­ry. Com­pli­ment­ed by Monroe’s restraint and Cage’s pleas­ing­ly har­row­ing per­for­mance, it’s a film that begs to be rewatched and dissected…if you’ve got the stom­ach for it.