It says something about Oz Perkins’ distinctive contribution to the horror genre that his latest features Nicolas Cage in a supporting role as a serial killer who looks, sounds, and acts nothing like the Nicolas Cage we know and love. In fact, Perkins and the publicity crew at Neon have done a good job of keeping Cage’s character completely under wraps while admitting that he plays the titular devil worshipper, which of course makes the movie all the more irresistible. At this late date it’s not giving anything away to say the character really is something—horrifying and creepy in a unique way. Too bad the movie built around the character doesn’t take proper advantage of him.

Either an homage to or a ripoff of The Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs features another novice female FBI agent thrust into a case that’s been baffling the big boys. Unlike Jody Foster’s Clarice, however, Maika Monroe’s Lee Harker is not tasked with using her particular talents to glean insider dirt from an incarcerated serial killer to help catch one who is still at large. Instead, Harker herself seems to have been targeted by Longlegs, a person who somehow enters homes, either corporeally or spiritually, and then makes one member of the family slaughter all the others before offing themselves, leaving coded messages that Harker seems to be able to decipher. Her cynical but frustrated boss (Blair Underwood) isn’t really keen on letting this young’un have free rein over the case, but he’s under pressure to solve it after almost 30 years of zero leads, and Harker has already shown an ability to intuit killers in her vicinity. Perkins never uses the word “psychic” to describe Harker. It’s more like a sensitivity born of her upbringing in a pious Christian household with apocalyptic leanings. Whenever killers like Longlegs invoke Christian iconography and language, Harker can usually explain their motives and movements because she’s been there, so to speak. 

Though Perkins (who, by the way, is the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins) knows how to maintain tension and create visuals that linger uncomfortably in the viewer’s psyche for days, he’s hung up on process, and as Longlegs’ identity and methodology are clarified he has to juggle several plotlines involving Harker’s mother and her boss’s own family in order to see the story through to its natural conclusion, which is more confounding than it is shocking. But it isn’t as startling as Longlegs himself, who, thanks to Cage, is a piece of work, and one you’re not likely to forget any time soon. 

Another aspect that Longlegs has in common with Silence is that it’s set in the 90s, though that’s not necessarily an important aspect. The Sweet East, the indie debut by veteran cinematographer Sean Price Williams, is set in the present, but for almost a half hour I thought it took place in the 70s. The production values, language, clothing, even the film stock felt like it was all trying to copy the laid-back immediacy of the early work of Altman and Ashby and their fondness for the picaresque, so it wasn’t until someone referenced Pizzagate that I realized it was lampooning our current sick society.

The requisite innocent is Lillian (Talia Ryder), a high school girl who is taking her first trip out of South Carolina with her Bible study group to Washington D.C. on a field trip. Adolescent energy eventually overwhelms any desire for edification, and Lillian decides to jump ship by joining a bunch of Antifa-anarchists who are planning a big violent protest. Not so much innocent as provoked by boredom, Lillian manages to escape the mess these clowns get into and then falls into the arms, so to speak, of the other side, specifically a white supremacist academic (Simon Rex) who educates her on the finer points of Nazi symbolism and the literature of Edgar Allen Poe. Though the seduction of nubile Lillian initially seems to be his scheme, the girl’s chronic “whatever” attitude seems to put him off and soon she’s being recruited off the streets of New York by two indie filmmakers (Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy O. Harris) who are making a movie about, of all things, the construction of the Erie Canal. Paired with a hunk actor (Jacob Elordi, the current definition of the term), Lillian is still unimpressed, but somehow parlays the part into minor celebrity status that also fails to impress her.

It’s difficult to determine exactly what Nick Pinkerton’s script is supposed to be saying, except that maybe some people are incorruptible because they just don’t give a shit, but the director has a great time making his set pieces look as presentable as possible on 16mm. This, after all, is the guy who shot such impossibly frantic indies as Good Time and Her Smell, and he manages to infuse a story that doesn’t know what it’s really about with a strong feeling of forward momentum. It goes nowhere fast. 

Longlegs now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Sweet East now playing in Tokyo at Human Trush Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Longlegs home page in Japanese

The Sweet East home page in Japanese

Longlegs photo (c) MMXXIII C2 Motion Picture Group, LLC

The Sweet East photo (c) 2023 The Sweet East Productions, LLC