Longlegs is one of the best movies of the year

It’s been a good year to be a horror fan, with the likes of Late Night with the Devil, Immaculate, A Quiet Place: Day One all impressive, and the highly anticipated Alien: Romulus and Smile 2 still to come.

But even in such a strong year, Longlegs stands alone from the rest of the pack.

Arriving in theaters this week with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating (as of this writing) and a flurry of enthusiastic responses, we wouldn’t blame you for thinking Longlegs can’t live up to the hype — but it absolutely does.

In keeping with the excellent marketing campaign for Longlegs, we’ll be brief on the details of what to expect. If you’re imagining The Silence of the Lambs, only much darker in tone and plot, then you’re on the right track.

The film opens at an undetermined point, when a young woman comes face to face with the serial killer known only to the police as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). He’s been on a murder spree for decades, and the only clues left behind at each crime scene are notes filled with occult symbols without rhyme or reason.

Enter talented FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), who is recruited by Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) to hunt down the Longlegs. But as she begins to delve deeper into the crimes, Longlegs seems to be just as interested in her.

It’s a case that shakes Harker to the core—and you’ll be left just as shaken.

Before even getting to the technical craft on display, Longlegs is lifted by two excellent performances from Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage. Without stars of their talent, you’d still be scared, but you wouldn’t be emotionally invested as well.

Lee Harker is a difficult, socially awkward and out-of-date character, but Monroe – already a genre star with the likes of It Follows and The Guest – conveys the emotion and pain behind who she is. You might initially want to compare her drive to that of Clarice Starling, but Monroe makes sure she’s her own unique hero.

On the other side is a truly unrecognizable Nicolas Cage as Longlegs. It’s a fearless and transformative performance from one of the most dynamic actors around and up there with the best. Vocally, there are occasional “Cage rage” flourishes, but it’s Longlegs’ softness that proves most unsettling.

The visual makeover has been cleverly kept out of the marketing, and writer/director Osgood Perkins teases you with a few slips here and there. It’s an entryway into the film where Longlegs is revealed in all his glory, and the effect is impactful.

Another thing that might surprise you about Longlegs is that, despite covering some very dark ground, it’s rarely free. There are stark images—a blood-splattered Happy Birthday banner here, a family of corpses in a bed there—but it’s not too gruesome.

Perkins often leaves it to your imagination and relies on tone to creep you out. From Andrés Arochi’s crisp, wide cinematography (which leaves vast spaces around the characters) to Eugenio Battaglia’s haunting sound design, the film creates an oppressive atmosphere where everything is slightly “off”.

You can’t relax at all during Longlegs, and you’ll come out of it feeling a little dirty, like it’s something you can shake off quite a bit. If this sounds like an unpleasant viewing experience, on the contrary, you won’t want to look away either, because it’s so compelling in its bleakness.

If you’re after jump scares, you won’t find much here, other than one extremely effective outdoor one. But that relative absence of a quick jolt is replaced by a lingering dread throughout, so you’ll still be terrified.

As the Longlegs start to wind up, you might start to worry that they might not stick the landing. After an intense showdown, it seems like the story is over, but Perkins surprises you with a clever, surprising development that leaves you wanting a revisit.

It’s the gory bent of the proceedings that cements Longlegs as not just one of the best horror movies of 2024, but one of the best movies of the year overall.

You are not ready for the unforgettable and refreshing experience that is Longlegs.

Longlegs is in theaters now.

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