Caution: Spoilers
Okay this one is a doozy, so bear with me. While this is more of a thriller than a horror, this movie definitely exceeded my expectations. Nicholas Cage did an excellent job producing and acting in this movie. That alone, I don’t want to say shocked me, but I was incredibly pleased with the style of filming and acting from him and the other characters.
The style is difficult to describe. Based on the intro scene, I first thought it was giving “Silence of the Lambs” meets “Amityville Horror”. However, it slowly morphs into a paranormal variation of “Zodiac”. You can tell where the inspiration came from, but “Longlegs” is absolutely it’s own entity in itself.
We’re introduced to Longlegs right in the beginning, which I wasn’t expecting. The movie starts out with a young girl noticing a strange vehicle outside of her house. When she goes out to investigate, you can hear her mother in the background calling for her. She turns, acknowledging her mother’s call, but she doesn’t respond. As she turns back around, there’s a pale man with long gray hair and disheveled clothes standing in front of her, but his face not in frame. He starts talking some nonsense and the girl stands there, stone-faced. Suddenly, the man lets out a cackle that he emanates with his entire body, his knees buckle, and he hunches over to give the audience a glimpse of his face for a split second before the title screen pops up.
Now this whole intro scene was filmed in 4:3 ratio, and as the credits roll, the ratio slowly pans out to a widescreen. I later noticed that they used the 4:3 ratio to indicate past events and I thought that was a really nice touch. It kind of makes you focus more on what’s going on, if that makes sense. Like they’re hoping the viewer hones in on smaller details that ultimately give hints to the plot.
We flip to Special Agent Lee Harker, who’s getting debriefed with her colleagues about where they should begin the hunt for a suspected killer. I don’t know what it is about Harker, but this first scene, I immediately loved her. She has a relatability to her that pulls you into her character and makes you want to know more, but ultimately, you never really get the opportunity. I literally wrote in my notes, “I’d be friends with her,” and I stand by that.
While her and her partner, Agent Fisk, are in a neighborhood knocking on doors and questioning people about this suspect, she begins hearing a low-pitched ringing noise. She turns around toward a house and says, “It’s that one,” indicating that that’s where the suspect is hiding out. Her partner takes it upon himself to walk up to the door and ring the doorbell.. and this part was pretty sick. As Fisk rings the doorbell, Harker is walking slowly past a large window that has the blinds pulled down. You can hear heavy footsteps approaching from the distance and walking right past the window ahead of Harker. The door opens, and as Fisk is reciting his monologue that he’s said to every other house he questioned, he’s interrupted by a bullet through his head. Yeah dawg, immediately #wasted. The best movies pop off immediately and you cannot change my mind. Long story short there, Harker takes the murderer into custody.
We’re then met with a pretty confusing scene of what seems to be Harker taking a psych evaluation. Next thing we know she’s in a car with Lieutenant Carter and Agent Browning, who eludes to Harker being psychic based on identifying the house where the suspect was hiding out and the psych test. I’m sure you’re not surprised to know my immediate response was, “fuck yeah.”
Carter immediately wants Harker on the Longlegs case and shows her the notes left at the crime scenes. They’re essentially Zodiac killer style with strange glyphs and signed by “Longlegs”. When she’s reviewing the documents and crime scene evidence, she has a line that I resonated SO deeply with. Carter basically asks her how she’s able to make connections so easily, and her response is that it’s “like something tapping you on the shoulder telling you where to look.” When I say that’s the perfect way to describe intuitive guidance and information, it is spot on.
Now at this point, I was thinking that Longlegs uses some sort of psychic attack to infiltrate the minds a family member and has them do the killings. It seemed to be on par with the theme so far with Harker being psychic, and the fact that they believe Longlegs is never actually at the scene of the crime ever. There’s never any evidence of forced entry, weapons are always something that was inside the house, and there’s no trace that anyone other than the victims are in the home at the time of the murders. (Just wait, this movie is wild.)
Harker is introduced to Carter’s family briefly, and naturally as an intuitive queen, his daughter Ruby seems to take a liking to her. Ruby asks Harker if she’d come to her birthday party, and Harker reluctantly agrees.
After she gets home, there’s a turn of events that lead to Harker finding a birthday card from Longlegs on her desk. Somehow, she’s able to decode the symbols in the letter and brings it into Carter’s office the next day. When he asks how she figured it out, she delivers another great line: “I only looked long enough.”
Now, there’s a couple points where Harker calls her mother, Ruth, and they have these quick, awkward conversations. It gives the vibe that their relationship is a bit estranged. Each time she speaks to her, Ruth asks her if she’s saying her prayers, and during the second phone call when her mother asks her and she says no, her mother says, “Prayers protect us from the devil.” This kind of gives the viewer reason to believe that maybe that’s the reason why their relationship seems so off, but again… just keep reading : )
I have to shout out the film style because the movie is already pretty eerie, but the camera pans and angles are such a nice touch. There’s a point where the characters walk past the camera and the camera doesn’t follow. The camera stays completely still at times focused on the backgrounds, but there’s never really a focal point. To me, it gives the impression that there’s always something or someone lurking and keeping an eye on our MC.
“The panning past our MCs into the background is tormenting.”
bullet from my notes
So Carter and Harker head to the Camera family’s home, the most recent victims of Longlegs. There, in the family barn, they uncover from the floorboards a life size, porcelain doll. They bring it to forensics and they’re told that this doll has human hair and a metal ball of sorts was found in its head. When they’re told this, the ball starts making a low-pitched ringing sound that only Harker seems to hear. (Remember that from earlier?) She’s snapped out of it by Carter who says that they need to visit the surviving member of that family, who has been in psych ward since she found her family butchered. Her name is Carrie Anne.
The visit to Carrie Anne isn’t incredibly significant, but we do learn that she seems to recognize Harker, saying, “You’ve been to my house.” Harker denies that she’s ever been to her house prior to that day, but Carrie Anne isn’t convinced. We get some visuals of what happened the day her family was murdered, and it’s all from the perspective of the doll. A key point in this interview, though, is that when Harker asks Carrie Anne if she remembers the doll, she responds, “No, but you don’t either.” Utter confusion at this point, but we proceed.
After this meeting, we find out that Carter is a bit suspicious of Harker because the Longlegs case has been frozen for years and soon as she gets put on it, dots are connecting seamlessly. He took a peek at some police reports and finds out that Harker’s mother had made a police report on Harkers 9th birthday about a strange man being at their house. He tells her that she needs to have a conversation with her mother and to find out who that stranger was and if it could have been Longlegs.
As we already know, Harker has a weird relationship with her mother. When she sits down next to her, her mother asks her again if she’s been saying her prayers, to which Harker responds, “I never said my prayers, never once. They scared me.” Ruth’s response? Not what you’d expect.. “Prayers don’t help us. Prayers don’t do a goddamn thing.”
Harker presses her about her 9th birthday and why she called the police about a stranger on their property. She avoids the question at all costs, never giving a straight answer. Harker eventually goes to her old bedroom to find a chest of things from her childhood. There, she finds polaroids, and we get a flashback of a young Lee Harker snapping a picture of Longlegs right before her mother comes out to question him. Longlegs starts yapping away and says, “You can make me leave, but I’ll have to come back not once or twice, but as many times as I like.” We then immediately flash to Longlegs at a bus stop, with two suitcases, and sirens approach from the distance. The cops eventually surround him and take him into custody. I honestly don’t know how I feel about them finding him so easily, but I guess it worked with the character and the plot.
I have to say, I really love the Longlegs character. He makes the viewer so uneasy and he’s super cringe at some points during a couple scenes where it’s just him. Nicky Cage did such a great job. He knows how to demand attention.
In the interrogation room, Harker walks in to an over-joyed Longlegs, welcoming her in as the birthday girl. She tries getting answers from him, asking him who his accomplice is and who is “the man downstairs”, as he keeps referring to. This guy just speaks in riddles and honestly, I’m so here for it. I love a killer with riddles and shit. In his own way, he explains how the houses were chosen and the conditions that had to be met. When Harker asks him for the last time who the man downstairs is, his response is, “Why don’t you ask your mommy?” He then proceeds to smash his face into the metal table until he’s dead.
My mom clocked something I didn’t at this point. She said that when Longlegs says, “Crimson or clover,” during the interrogation, this meant that Ruth had to make a deal with “the guy downstairs” in order to save her daughter. Shout out to Barb.
Harker races to her mother’s house with Agent Browning, who gets blasted by a shotgun the moment Harker gets inside her mother’s house. She looks out the window to see her mother walking around the other side of the car to shoot Browning one more time, before noticing her daughter standing in the window watching her. She runs outside and around the side of the house to find her mother standing there with a doll that looks exactly like a young Lee Harker. Her mother says, “You’re free, baby girl,” and blasts the doll in the head. We see a dark mist come out of the doll’s head, then out of Harker’s head before she passes out.
Now we get the full story of what the opening scene was about from Ruth’s point of view. One day a stranger visited their home and claimed he was a doll maker from the church. We’re to assume that he was invited into the home because the next scene is of him tying Ruth up in their living room and a young Lee peering through the doorway of her bedroom. Ruth made a deal with Longlegs that if he spared her daughter, she’d help him with what he was doing. Ruth explains that, “from his hiding place from within the dolls, the guy downstairs did the rest,” and she just needed to get the doll inside of the house and watch each family murder to ensure everything was done to “his” satisfaction. Basically, the dolls were harboring the devil and he’d brainwash each father with that low-pitched ringing to kill their family.
Was NOT what I was expecting in any capacity. I was thoroughly impressed.
After this re-telling from Ruth’s POV, we find Harker waking up in what appears to be Longlegs’ hideout… which is her mother’s fucking basement. Yes, Longlegs was hiding out in her childhood home and she was standing mere feet above him when she went there earlier. She hears a phone ringing, she picks up the line, and a creepy voice on the other end reminds her of Ruby’s birthday party. YES, WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE TO THAT.
When she arrives at Carter’s home, he and his wife answer the door strangely smiley and welcoming. Harker asks if everyone is okay, if Ruby is alright, and they both assure her everything is fine and that they’re just about to cut her birthday cake… DAWG. She walks into the living room to see Ruby sitting next to a life size doll of herself and her mother sitting directly across from Ruby. Harker tries to tell Carter that her mother is the accomplice, but it seems that Carter has already succumbed to the power within the doll. It’s so hard to describe the vibe of the room because, well, his wife is inexplicably chipper with a hint of panic and anxiety, while Carter is seemingly raging and short tempered. Ruby is quite sitting next to her doll and doesn’t mutter a single word during this entire scene.
Abruptly, Carter eerily says it’s time to cut the cake, which is quite obviously code for it’s time to cut something (or someone) else. His wife lets out an awkward yelp, as if she’s startled by what he says. She says, “I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back,” to which Carter snaps, “No. I’ll be right back,” implying she ain’t coming back because she’s the one about to get cut up. Shocker, she does. We don’t get a visual, but we hear all we need to hear to get the gist of what went down in that kitchen. Carter comes out, bloodied and knife in hand, and Harker raises her gun and tells him to drop it. He doesn’t, and like the fantastic character she is, shoots him dead. When she does this, her mother is TRIGGERED and stands up to attack Ruby. Baby girl wastes no time and shoots her mom point blank between the eyes. Quite the fabulous shot.
We’re left with quite the open-ended scene as Harker clings onto Ruby and tries to shoot Ruby’s doll to release what’s inside, but realizes she’s out of ammo. Her gun clicks a few times and we begin to hear that low-pitched ringing again. We’re kind of left unsure of what this means, as it cuts to black, then back to Longlegs in the interrogation room who leaves us with a wonderful declaration (sarcasm) that I will not be reciting. If you wanna know, go watch the movie.
Welp! I think that’s my longest review yet, but it was worth it. This was such a great movie, though, again, I wouldn’t really consider it horror. I mean, it’s horrific in certain aspects, but definitely not the genre per se. I’d give this a solid 9/10.
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Until next time ❤
hugs & kisses xx
Meg
