Fear is a spectrum. Some are more susceptible to it than others, while some welcome the sensation with open arms. When buzz for Osgood Perkins’ latest film, Longlegs, started making the rounds, the consensus seemed to be that the film reached a level of frightening unheard of in the horror genre. As a diehard horror fan who falls into the latter camp of the aforementioned “fear spectrum”, I was more than enticed by these notions, as I’m always on the lookout for a good scare. What struck me the most about Longlegs, however, was that it wasn’t as frightening as others hyped it up to be – at least, not in the traditional sense.

Longlegs relies heavily on its formidable feeling of mood, which creeps up on you in a way that you can’t even describe until it’s too late. It’s like the sensation of an insect crawling on your skin, only to check and realize that there’s nothing there. The bleak color palettes on top of the wintery backdrop build an excellent sense of malaise, creating suspense out of the mundane through slow zooms and steady camerawork. If that isn’t enough, Perkins occasionally throws in some sublime and abstract imagery of snakes, bubbling goo, and shadowy figures that give you a turbocharged version of the heebie-jeebies. Longlegs always keeps you on your toes until your heart is practically thumping out of your chest; the amount of momentum Perkins can maintain throughout is stupefying. It’s such a breezy hundred minutes that I was a bit surprised when the film cut to the credits, despite a thematically satisfying finale. The ending may be unsatisfying for some, but I managed to appreciate what Perkins was trying to say after some thinking. Half of the beauty of Longlegs is the experience when you’re watching it; the other half is how it haunts you long after you’ve left the theater. While I wasn’t horrified to the drastic extent that other viewers were, Longlegs is certainly not for the faint of heart. 

Akin to the laundry list of predecessors like Se7en, The Silence of the Lambs, Cure, and True Detective, Longlegs exists within a favorite subgenre of mine, within the crossroads of horror, police procedurals, and thrillers. It’s not like your usual horror film where you’re jumpscared to hell and back; it’s a slowly moving crawl into the disconcertingly macabre. While the sparse jumpscares certainly startled me, I was much more taken aback by the sheer presence of Longlegs. The horror slowly encroaches to a point where I didn’t even notice something scary had happened until someone in my theater screamed. Aside from one or two well-placed jump scares, many of the horror elements happen without warning. They’re simply there, waiting for you to notice them. Cinematographer Andres Arochi shoots the film with very wide lenses that emit a persistent feeling of paranoia, where even the safest spaces seem like they could be soured in an instant. The visual language that Arochi and Perkins manage to accomplish is always engaging, with lots of open space and an ever-changing aspect ratio. Every open doorframe is an invitation for whatever lurks around the corner, and the vastness of exterior shots feel like they could go on for miles in any direction.

Unlike most horror films, Longlegs doesn’t force its presence onto the viewer through generic tropes that have been recycled for decades. Rather than relying on the elements of horror that I find the most eye-rolling, Perkins has enough confidence in his screenplay and direction for every dastardly element to fall into its right place. Knowing that he’s the son of Anthony Perkins, the late and great actor who played Norman Bates in Psycho, it’s safe to say that the foundations of horror course through Osgood’s veins. His precise camerawork, steady framing, and wide angles illustrate an immaculate sense of disquiet while cementing him as an incredibly strong voice within the genre. His previous features, while still formally impressive, lacked the X-factor that Longlegs has in spades.

A lot of that X-factor comes from the ever-so-idiosyncratic Nicolas Cage as the titular character, which is a role that I feel like only he could pull off. There’s such an astonishing level of confidence in Cage’s menacingly off-kilter performance as Longlegs; I see a very strong Oscar contender within this role. The film’s viral marketing campaign did the character a lot of favors by not showing Cage in his full makeup, as the result is truly a sight to behold (it’s certainly not a pretty one, though). Like the film itself, there’s a quietly bubbling darkness to Longlegs where Cage simultaneously feels disarming, eerie, and exceedingly dangerous. There’s an uncannily infantile quality to his mannerisms, which is much more spine-chilling than your average mastermind serial killer antagonist. The quieter moments with Longlegs are much more effective than his occasional outbursts, as you’re stuck shivering in anticipation for this maniac to snap. With or without the ghastly makeup, Nicolas Cage is utterly unrecognizable in this role.

Maika Monroe, who I’ve been familiar with since her breakout turns in 2014’s It Follows and The Guest, turns in a career-best performance as Lee Harker, a newly recruited and exceptionally intuitive FBI agent who is assigned to Longlegs’ case. While the obvious comparisons to Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling are apt, Foster’s performance in The Silence of the Lambs felt much more controlled and subdued than Monroe’s performance as Harker, who perpetually seems like she hasn’t slept in weeks. On top of a seemingly unsolvable serial killer case, Harker struggles with a healthy portion of religious baggage brought on by her mother, which reemerges as Harker dives deeper into the satanic clues that Longlegs has left for her. 

Monroe does an outstanding job at illustrating Harker on the precipice of her breaking point, playing a quietly intelligent detective who is thrown into the darkest recesses of satanism. Monroe’s performance unravels at the same speed as the case does, with her steely eyes carrying much of her unspoken emotional weight. As things go from bad to worse to dreadful, Monroe visibly becomes more disheveled and exhausted, culminating in an explosive conclusion that left me breathless. In a just world, I would see her being nominated alongside Nicolas Cage, but I have a bad feeling that the Academy will gloss over such a mesmerizing performance.

Longlegs knowingly wears its predecessors on its sleeve before taking a mind-bending sharp turn into something that the marketing has hidden exceptionally well. Perkins deliberately presents Longlegs as one thing before subverting it into something else entirely, as he is well aware of genre trappings and how to avoid them. A delightfully sinister throwback to the serial killer films of the 90s, Longlegs is unpredictable, foreboding, sometimes funny, and a richly textured horror experience with an incredibly moody aesthetic. If Osgood Perkins wasn’t a filmmaker to watch then, he surely is now.