Producers: Dan Kagan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Nicolas Cage, Dave Caplan and Chris Ferguson  Director: Osgood Perkins   Screenplay: Osgood Perkins   Cast: Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Nicolas Cage, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby, Lauren Acala, Kiernan Shipka   Distributor: Neon

Grade: C

Perhaps it’s appropriate that a movie about a Faustian bargain should require a Faustian bargain of sorts of its viewers.  Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ contract with us seems to be: I’ll give you a hundred minutes of unsettling creepiness, but in return you have to accept one of the dumbest denouements a horror story has ever posited.  And one of Nicolas Cage’s most outlandish performances, too—which, as everyone knows, is saying a lot.

Cage plays a guy named Dale Kobble, who calls himself Longlegs in the encrypted letters he leaves for authorities at homes in the Pacific Northwest where families have been slaughtered.  The murders have been going on sporadically for more than twenty-five years, starting in the mid-sixties (as eventually becomes clear) and continuing well into the Clinton administration.  We catch a glimpse of the long-haired, emaciated fellow, laughing hysterically in strange garb, at the start of the movie.  In a scene shot by cinematographer Andrés Arochi Tinajero in the boxy academy format, with the top cropped to conceal much of Kobble’s face, he drives up to an isolated house and accosts a little girl (Lauren Acala) who’s come out to investigate his arrival.

Cut to two decades on.  Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a newbie FBI agent, suffers a horrendous experience when her partner, a guy named Fisk (Dakota Daulby), insists on nonchalantly knocking on the door of a house where she’s suggested that a perpetrator is lurking.  It turns out she was right, and while the villain she’d predicted was there apparently gets away, her enhanced powers of intuition, confirmed by tests, lead agency bigwig Carter (Blair Underwood) to have her join him on the stalled Longlegs case. 

It’s a real puzzle, because in each gruesome episode there’s no indication Longlegs was actually present when the family was killed by the actual perpetrator, the father; were it not for the letters, all would appear to be simple murder-suicides.  Nor have the bureau’s experts been able to decipher the letters he’s penned with each slaughter.  So he’s left Carter and his team, which includes Agent Browning (Michelle Choi-Lee), with nothing to go on but his nom de carnage.

Harker, a sensitive, introverted young woman who lives alone in a remote cabin, proves an indefatigable scrutinizer of the evidence—which in this case centers on Longlegs’ mysterious letters.  She manages to decipher them, though her success is aided by the contents of an envelope delivered by someone to her home one dark night.  They reveal a pattern based on the fact that each family had a young daughter whose birthday fell on the fourteenth of the month when the crimes occurred—what Harker refers to as “his algorithm.”  She also learns that the string of murders goes back further than had been thought, to 1966, when a farmer named Camera (Jason Day) had killed his wife (Lisa Chandler) and a priest who was visiting them.  But their daughter Carrie (Maila Hosie) survived, though she’s been institutionalized and unable to speak since.

Thus far Perkins’ script, though outlandish, has been pretty coherent. Now, though, it grows increasingly complicated as coincidences pile up and new elements are added to the mix.  Carter and Harker (which sounds rather like a bad vaudeville team) venture out to the deserted Camera farm, and find in the barn a strange doll with a ball inside its head—which, though empty, seems to emit a sinister low-frequency sound.  They go to the asylum where Carrie (Kiernan Shipka) has been kept for thirty years, only to learn that the catatonia she’d suffered from has just broken after a visit from a mysterious man, the first person ever to come to see her—who’d signed in under Harker’s name.  Harker interviews her, and Carrie, who inexplicably speaks in weird old-timey language, ends the conversation with a declaration of devotion to “the man downstairs,” at whose direction, she says, she would perform any act of violence.

From this point on, the plot becomes more and more convoluted as elements introduced earlier come into play.  Lee’s mother Ruth (Alicia Witt), an ex-nurse whom her daughter keeps at some remove, perhaps because she’s always reminding her to say her prayers, becomes a significant player, and a long-forgotten Polaroid photo emerges as an important clue.  Kobble is eventually arrested, and faces off against Harker in the interrogation room, acting every bit as maniacally as one could wish.  Carter introduces Harker to his family, wife Anna (Carmel Carter) and daughter Ruby (Ava Kelders); the girl takes a special interest in her, and Lee reciprocates despite her usual reserve.

By the close all of this has been brought together like the pieces of a puzzle, but the picture that emerges seems ludicrous even by horror movie standards, and if one reflects on the explanation afterward, it hardly passes the loosest plausibility test. 

But the picture does generate a genuinely creepy atmosphere, thanks to Perkins’ flair for the sinister and fine work by Arochi Tinajero, production designer Danny Vermette, editors Greg Ng and Graham Fortin, and composer Zilgi.  There are also effective contributions by costume designer Mica Kayde and the makeup team (especially in terms of Cage’s outrageous appearance) and Eugenio Battaglia, whose eerie sound design works with Zilgi’s music to complement the gray-drenched visuals and somber pacing.

The performances are part of Perkins’ vision too, of course, but they represent extremes.  Though Monroe’s character has been compared to Clarice Starling, she’s much less demonstrative than Jodie Foster was, even when she breaks loose in the finale.  Cage, by contrast, is at his wildest; Kobble’s mania couldn’t be more unlike the restrained, seductive evil Anthony Hopkins exuded as Hannibal Lecter.  He does bring a measure of humor to the otherwise gloomily serious tone, however, especially in a throwaway scene when he confronts a poker-faced young clerk in a convenience store.  Witt and Underwood are fine, though once again it’s not until the last reel that they get to sink their teeth into something challenging.

With “Longlegs” Perkins again demonstrates his skill in fashioning the sinister mood effective horror films require, but it also proves that he needs to hone his storytelling craft to equal his stylistic control.