Although Halloween is a handful of months away, Oz Perkins delivered a haunting new film to the big screen. “Longlegs” is a horror, mystery, and psychological thriller starring Nicolas Cage as Longlegs and Maika Monroe as FBI Agent Lee Harker.
With intriguing trailers and promotional clips, the film’s marketing campaign built suspense for the film without giving any real clue about what the plot entails. The film is beautifully framed and shot, exceeding in directional experimentation.
Shadows and lighting helped create the unsettling ambience that kept the audience at the edge of their seats; sound design, shrieking and loud suspenseful music amplified the terror with every creak and whisper.
The film is chilling in a way that crawls under the audience’s skin all because of Perkins’ masterful blend of supernatural and psychological terror. “Longlegs” is a complete 180 from the ordinary “cheesy jump scare” type of horror movie, it is the atmosphere within the movie itself that makes up the true dread.
El Paso local Susan Pena shares that she appreciated the difference in horror compared to other scary iconic movies such as “The Conjuring”.
“I truly found ‘Longlegs’ to be extremely more terrifying than any other horror movie I’ve seen this year,” Pena said. “From beginning to end it was extremely eerie and horrifying to watch everything unfold, and it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. In other movies, there is constant repeat of jump scares that you can kind of see coming a mile away but with this movie you are sitting with a chilling experience.”
“Longlegs” smashed the box office with $22.6 million in its opening weekend. Although “Despicable Me 4” surpassed “Longlegs”, earning $44.6 million in the same weekend, it is still a big success for the film’s production company “Neon” as it doubled its original budget of under $10 million in profit, as reported by Variety.
With Cage’s stellar performance as a satanic serial killer, his appearance on the big screen brings no sense of comfort with his pale face and terrifying mannerisms for the character.
According to GeekTyrant, when Monroe first laid eyes on Cage’s character, her microphone picked up her heart rate increasing from 76 to 170 beats per minute. This was then used as more promotional material on different social media platforms.
As critics and fans of the film say “Longlegs” is the “Silence of the Lambs” of the new generation, the film is a great psychological thriller with both gore and a great storyline.
From the creepy and cryptic trailers, and the slow yet controlled hints at plot details, it all worked together perfectly to build anticipation for “Longlegs”.
Marco Hinojosa is the audience and engagement editor and may be reached at [email protected].
