In just a few weeks, the horror hype film Longlegs will be released in cinemas. The international reviews promise a genre cracker, in which an outstanding Nicolas Cage in particular is set to shine
Are we about to see the most disturbing Nicolas Cage performance of all time? Initial reviews of the upcoming horror thriller Longlegs are certainly not holding back with strong praise for the eccentric star. The rest of the film by director Oz Perkins is also said to be a pretty intense, intense genre experience.
Horror hype: Longlegs reviews celebrate exceptional Nicolas Cage performance
The plot of the film revolves around young FBI agent Lee Harker (It Follows star Maika Monroe), who is on the hunt for the titular serial killer (Nicolas Cage). Not only is he said to have several families on his conscience, he is also involved in occult practices.
As Longlegs has just been released in the USA, various reviews of the film have appeared. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the work has just achieved a strong average of 92 percent. In his 5/5 star review for The Telegraph, Tim Robey praises Cage’s acting performance in particular:
Hidden in it is perhaps the scariest performance of Nicolas Cage’s career – and also one of the funniest. But you barely recognize him from the tiny snippets we get in the first half.
For Little White Lies Hannah Strong also highlights the actor’s performance in her very positive review:
What should be cartoonish is actually disturbing, its clownish nature contrasting with the horror of the ritual murders and the austere coolness of Andrés Arochi’s camerawork. Perkins pays tribute to the relationship between Starling and her nemesis Hannibal Lecter, though Longlegs is no quiet mastermind – Cage’s performance has more in common with Tom Noonan in Manhunter than Brian Cox or Anthony Hopkins.
Here you can watch another Longlegs trailer:
Longlegs should inspire with a lot of creepiness and atmosphere
In addition to Cage, Longlegs is also celebrated in some reviews as a very dense, intense horror highlight in its own right. Jen Yamato named it the scariest movie of the year so far in her Washington Post review:
References to Seven, Zodiac, and especially The Silence of the Lambs position Lee as the Clarice Starling of this work, in which the hallucinogenic editing of Greg Ng and Graham Fortin, the devilishly patient camerawork of cinematographer Andres Arochi, and the harrowing sound design of Eugenio Battaglia combine to create a potent menace via jump-scares, nightmare imagery, and ominous negative spaces of the picture.
But something more insidious begins to intrude on Perkins’ slice of American gothic horror as Lee’s prey becomes the hunter and her mind tugs at a long-buried childhood memory of a creepy stranger with a singsong voice she remembers only in fragments. And once you’ve had a full look at Longlegs, we wish you good luck getting him out of your head too.
William Bibbiani also describes his unpleasant viewing experience with Longlegs for The Wrap very promisingly:
For most of Longlegs, Perkins’ macabre imagery and enigmatic storytelling drill through you until you’re unable to move out of your seat. Over the course of four feature films, he has somehow filtered all human decency out of his atmosphere until all that’s left is fear and oppression. Damn, this movie is disturbing.
Katie Walsh still writes in her review for Spokesman about how Longlegs isn’t at all easy to understand, but that doesn’t really matter:
On a macro level, Longlegs offers no easy answers. Watching it feels like a puzzle, the movie itself is a code to be cracked, and when it’s over, the whole puzzle hasn’t been solved. That’s all right. For a movie that offers such a delicious rollercoaster ride of bad humor, it’s not about understanding everything. Just get on board and let Perkins lead the way – the journey is more than worth it.
(Maika Monroe in Longlegs)
