Longlegs (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is the year’s biggest horror phenomenon: A creepy and effective marketing campaign and the promise of an on-brand-as-ever unhinged Nicolas Cage performance resulted in $100 million at the box office, a huge take for an artsy serial killer thriller with a $10 million budget, on an indie imprint (NEON). It boasts further cred via star Maika Monroe, of It Follows fame, and finds writer/director Osgood Perkins – son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins – jumping from promising horror filmmaker to full-fledged auteur.
The Gist: Note: This movie takes place in a world where Satanism isn’t just hooey bull roar. I think. Somethingextraworldly is going on here, and it starts in the 1970s with a partial reveal of Longlegs (Cage) greeting young Lee Harker (Lauren Acala) outside her lonely and isolated home in rural Oregon. The tight aspect ratio broadens as we jump to the ’90s, and learn that …