The former reactions toLonglegshave been almost hysterical in their steel - your - nerves , hide - your - children exaggeration . You ’d think people were being fit for straightjacket on the way out of masking base on how they ’re verbalise about the film . In truth , this doomy occult arts killer thriller , scurrying into theaters this weekend on spindly legs of breathless hype , is n’t an bombardment of panic attack . But it does offer its own kind of overkill . Less interested in rattling nerves than slipping under the peel , the movie immediately cranks the atmosphere of boding disquiet to 11 and leaves it there . There ’s scarcely a individual scene that does n’t strain unrelentingly to give you the willies . If it fails to cringe anyone out , it sure wo n’t be for a lack of hear .

In the early nineties , a string of unsolved murder has frustrate the authorities : Parents turn on their fry , as if possessed by a homicidal look . Longlegsitself seems a bit possessed . Every mo of this film has a touch of almost pushy malevolence . The television camera slowly zooms in on the most shopworn details with a voyeuristic obsession . The story , cleaved into chapters , lurches forward with sudden stings of cruelly disorientate volume — the transitional equivalent of jump scares . There ’s a curst timber to the indoor scenes , bathed in sickly orange incandescence and filmed to emphasize the tomblike claustrophobia of dens and basements . And the dialogue clog on drained air , the suffocating silence between words .

The film director , Oz Perkins , has a natural endowment for tune up every panorama of a film — physical composition , tempo , performance , you name it — to a special relative frequency of consuming dread . right on from the initiative frames , Longlegsfinds him working that diabolical mojo . It commences with an abbreviated seventies flashback of something wicked this agency coming . Perkins shoots his prologue , in which a post wagon parks on the edge of a body politic home and a little girl comes out to meet the gangling alien skulking into her 1000 , in a strikingly boxy aspect ratio . The muted colors and beveled corners of the frame paint a picture a slideshow of sept photos perverted by sudden danger . The picture has barely begun , and we ’re already under its magic spell .

The stranger is the eponymous menace , a mystic figure somehow responsible for the killing . ( He squeal his culpability via letters rife with scriptural omen and compose in a Zodiac - like zero . ) Is he the heir apparent to Charles Manson , exert a persuasive influence over the slay crime syndicate ? Or is something more supernatural going on?Longlegsguides us into the mystery with a clammy hired hand on the articulatio humeri . On the case is Lee Harker ( Maika Monroe ) , a cub FBI agentive role with a touch of second sight . She ’s introduce aright nail the dwelling house of a slayer at large , who promptly dart her partner dead at the front threshold — an early shock in a thriller by and large heavier on humor than mayhem .

Longlegshas the expected flash of forensic gore , along with vision of barbarian violence . The most shocking matter about the motion-picture show , though , might be how ceremonious it turns out to be . Beneath the all - out violation of sinful manner , this is a fair straightforward , even derivative manhunt thriller . Perkins cobbles together his story from other touchstones of the genre : Thomas Harris procedurals , classics of cult horror , even the weekly gumshoeing ofMulder and Scully . Harker , whose resonance with her new partner ( Blair Underwood ) never evolves beyond boilerplate patter , is basicallyClarice Starlingcombined withWill Graham . And the causa itself extend through the usual corkboard of criminal offence - scene photograph and track leads .

The more the flick number together , the more it loses its coiling - snake postponement over the spectator . It ’s no spoiler to say that we finally gather the killer , and he ’s add to life by none other than Hollywood ’s undisputed maestro of oddball intensity and diction , Nicolas Cage . With his fibrous fuzz , lurching Slenderman logic gate , and glutinous white lineament , Longlegs certainly doesn’tlooklike any character the whizz has played before . But Cage overdo the squealing lunatic theatrics , crowd this bogeyman ’s psychosis so over the top that it passes “ scary ” and approaches “ campy . ” We ’ve been primed to meet the devil , and instead we ’re face with … Nicolas Cage , doing some typically uninhibited wild man shtick .

The film , like its villainous star performance , is only superficially perturbing . It ’s all creepy effect all the prison term . WhatLonglegslacks is the psychological dimension of the milepost it ’s evoking — the flavour of being pulled into the warped mind of either the Orcinus orca or those chamfer him . Silence of the Lambsobviously had that fascinate power . So do the in series - sea wolf potboilers ofDavid Fincher , drive by their obscene fixation with compulsion . In those flick , we saw evilness from the interior . Perkins keep us on the outside looking in , especially when his distorting anamorphic imagery turns the concealment into a fish bowl . We ’re not so much immersed in a world defile by dark forces as left to tap on its glass .

This is an strange problem for the filmmaker , whose former movies enveloped you emotionally in their dark narratives . His debut , a wintry prep - school sluggish burn alternately calledFebruaryandThe Blackcoat ’s Daughter , scrambled the chronology of a satanic wakening , come forth with something oddly sad and sinister . His 2nd feature of speech , theNetflix - holedI Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House , was even more funny : a whispery ghost fib with a strangely literary appeal , made in the key of Shirley Jackson . These were suggestive nightmares , unfashionable even in an age of vibes - forward horror . Longlegsapplies their tricks without their constraint . At time , it feels like a serial publication of nervous images and moments in search of a movie . No curiosity it ’s spawned such a brilliantly seductive marketing movement .

The last 60 minutes of the film descends into a maze of revelations , as Harker ’s pursuit leads her down memory lane and into a fresh infernal region of apprehension . But because we ’ve barely scratch the surface of her soul , or the deranged imagination of the fiend she ’s hunting , these wrench pack no tangible biff ; it ’s like ifSilence of theLambsnever give us that haunt anecdote behind its title of respect . By the end ofLonglegs , Perkins ’ blitzkrieg of knuckle - whitening devices , however fashionable and arresting , has begin to appear like a poor substitute for real little terror of the lingering kind . Even if itdoesget under your skin , its dread is strictly skin - cryptic .