What's the Movie About?
A weird FBI agent named Lee is on the trail of a satanic serial killer called Longlegs, who is convincing families to butcher themselves up.
What I Like.
This movie is top notch. The acting is pretty subdued for the most part, but it was excellent. Obviously Nicholas Cage chews the scenery of his scenes like he's a cow and the movie is cud. The story's pretty good for the most part. I like Lee a lot, and her partner was a little stereotypical but fun. I liked that all the licensed music was just T. Rex songs. Besides the fact that they are a good band, the cohesiveness of the music appeals to my OCD. The cinematography is great. I like the aspect rations between flashbacks and current plot time a lot. The old handheld ratio really works at being both nostalgic, and unnerving. The shot compositions were pretty unnerving as well. There's some great shots where focus is used to hide people lurking in the background and it looks SO COOL. There are also some great effects of images coming out of shadows that look awesome as well. The effects in general are good. There's not a whole bunch, but it's for the best so they can make them look the best they can. There's some maggoty corpses and one point that are stomach churning. And my god, it the atmosphere so. Fucking. GOOD. In this movie. There are scenes that reminded me of weird internet videos that you'd accidently stumble on in the early days. Y'know, the ones that are scarier than any horror movie you've ever seen, even though it's just a collection of creepy clips strung together with very little context? It approaches Alien level in the dread it made me feel. The music, sound design, and the cinematography are masterfully combined to make my toes curl and hands clutch at the seat. And it's addictive to watch as well. I never wanted to look away, and the few times I instinctively did I immediately turned back so I couldn't miss anything. I was having a really good time with this movie! For a while, I was wondering what I was going to rate higher at the end of the year, this or the Fall Guy. That was, until...
What I Didn't Like.
The ending. It's dumb and kinda sucks, but in order to get into it and everything I wanna say, I have to get into spoilers. Before I do, a brief digression. I'm not sure if I like the autistic-coding on Lee. On one hand, I like that the main character is autistic, and she's the kind of character that basically knows everything that is going on, even if not everyone listens to her. One two hand, she might act the way she does because of either psychic powers or trauma or something, so its the "only-rep-is-inhuman-or-diminished-characters" problem. On three hand, it's not directly stated if she is autistic or not so maybe I'm just overthinking this. I also think the gore was kinda unnecessary. Like it's fine, and whatever gets the horror fans in seats, right? But I feel like the movie would have been a lot scarier if we didn't get explicit shots of decayed bodies or Longlegs smashing his face in and it was just offscreen or implied. Anyway, on to spoiler talk. Skip to the Final Summation to avoid. (Or stop reading entirely since the Final Summation is really short and basically just: Watch the movie. Hey, sometimes it's just that straight forward.)
So my main problem with the ending is the explanation about how Longlegs is forcing families to go nuts. It's Satan magic. Like he makes these dolls that have a metal sphere in the head, and in the sphere is black mist that is evil I guess. First problem is that it's really unclear, even with the explanation. They do not explain what the black mist is or how Longlegs can make the metal balls. It's heavily implied a demonic figure is involved somehow but you only see it maybe once. Longlegs' surprise accomplice also has really confusing motivation that is probably just they went crazy, but I have no idea. The second problem is maybe something you felt too, if you've seen the movie or read my spoiler. That solution is lame, right? Like it doesn't come out of nowhere, they kinda imply that Lee is psychic in the beginning. But not only is it pretty probable that she isn't (she might just really smart/reliving forgotten trauma), but why does psychic powers existing mean that black magic exists? I was honestly rewriting the movie while watching the movie.
How I Would Fix The Movie.
Roan, what is this bullshit? Something we will barely ever revisit! I am not a professional screenwriter. In fact, I'm not a screenwriter at all. But I do like to creative write, and sometimes I like to imagine what the story of a movie would be if I wrote it. And I did have an idea, so.... So this is fanfiction. And what's wrong with that Buggnutz?!
Anyway, let's throw out the idea that the black gas is magic. What if, instead, it's just like a knockout gas? I mean shooting open the ball knocks out Lee for a bit in the finale, so it makes sense. The ball just release the gas after a delay and you can make up some excuse why Longlegs and the accomplice are immune. Exposure maybe, or perhaps there's a chemical they consume that counteracts the gas. Whatever. After when the gas knocks out the families, then the accomplice kills the families, or lets Longlegs in to do it. And since the accomplice has medical knowledge, they can stage the murders to look like murder suicides or struggles or whatever. I'd also rewrite the final scene to be a denouement instead of a vague tragic ending, but that'd be really restructuring the movie.
Final Summation.
Despite a lackluster finish, Longlegs is really damn good. I think most people should check it out just for the atmosphere and the acting. All there really is to say.
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