We were long overdue for another episode featuring fan and podcast-favourite Nic Cage, and what better film for discussion than the much anticipated LONGLEGS? We’re going to give a quick rundown of recent Nic Cage films, as well as director Osgood Perkins filmography before we jump headfirst into the feature film. We have lots to say for a film with lots of genres – we think there’s a little something for everyone here. Get yourself comfortable and listen in!
Also, go watch the movie first! We don’t hold back on spoilers in our discussion (we give plenty of warning in the episode).
Longlegs (2024)
directed by: Osgood Perkins
starring: Maika Monroe – Nicolas Cage – Blair Underwood – Alicia Witt
genres: horror – crime – thriller
runtime: 101 minutes
Transcript (via Apple)
*not 100% accurate
Hi there, welcome back to The Reel Film Chronicles podcast.
As always, I’m Nathan.
And I’m Brian.
And in this week’s very special episode, we’re going to be taking a look at a little film called Longlegs.
Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins, Perkins, sorry.
I believe the son of famed actor Anthony Perkins from Psycho Fame.
Yeah, I had no idea.
Right, I had no idea about that either.
I’d seen a couple of his movies beforehand, and we’ll talk about those shortly.
He was also written by Perkins and stars Maika Monroe, who has become quite the horror star in the past few years, as well as Nicolas Cage.
You got Blair Underwood in there as well, doing a bang-up job, yeah, Longlegs, 2024.
This movie had quite the viral marketing behind it, I guess.
I don’t know if he fell into it.
It doesn’t sound like it based on that.
I did not hear, I heard about this movie randomly a couple of weeks ago.
You mentioned it, I think, because it was Nicolas Cage, and you know my proclivity for Nicolas Cage.
Yeah.
And I was like, there’s a new Nicolas Cage movie out, and it just so happened that my wife and son were off.
She was picking up from summer camp, and my daughter and I were kind of home alone.
I was picking up from the bar, and it’s like, oh, we should watch a movie tonight.
I was like, okay, well, why don’t we go to the theater?
Done.
Let’s go see Longlegs.
And my daughter, we watched some horror movies before, so she’s cool with it.
But it was just completely random.
You said it mentioned to me earlier that day, and I happened to go to the theater that night, but I had not heard of this movie at all beforehand.
So my finger was far from the pulse on this one.
It’s one of those things where, yeah, I mean, if you’re not on the right sites, maybe, or watching some of the things where they decide to put out the advertising and marketing, and I’d heard about the viral marketing on this, but I don’t think I’d actually seen much of it myself.
I had seen probably a teaser trailer months and months and months ago.
I knew all I needed to know.
Nic Cage, horror movie, Maika Monroe.
I’m sold.
I’m gonna be there for it.
And I think I put it in the calendar and then avoided any other trailers and whatnot that came out afterwards.
But this would probably be a difficult movie to spoil, even in a trailer, because you’re not going to get the full effect of the performances and the atmosphere that were so prevalent here.
But, as you said, you are Nicolas Cage-obsessed, so to speak.
You are actively collecting all the Nicolas Cage movies on Blu-ray, DVD, et cetera, right?
And that’s no easy feat.
There’s a lot of Nic Cage movies.
In fact, we’ve covered-
A lot.
And not all of them get advertised.
I wouldn’t blame you for missing a Nic Cage movie, because every time I look on Letterboxd or IMDb and see his movies, there’s one or two that came out in the past few months that were-
Well, it’s crazy because I heard about The Arcadian, but I didn’t hear about Longlegs.
I think The Arcadian was a 2024 release as well, I think.
Or was that late 2023?
So that is listed as 2024.
I don’t have an actual release date on it, but yeah.
We’ve covered three Nic Cage movies on the podcast before.
Just like we do Guy Ritchie films where we just inherently seem to talk about them, devote episodes to it.
We devote episodes to Nic Cage movies, but not for a little while.
We started out, first one was Willie’s Wonderland.
I remember that one.
The second one, do you remember what the second Nic Cage movie is we discussed?
It had to be Pig.
Pig, yeah, definitely Pig.
And then a third one, last year.
Oh wait, what was last year?
Renfield.
Oh, of course, of course.
I think of it as Nicholas Holt’s movie, but yeah, like, that’s right.
Nicolas Cage played a huge role in it.
Yeah, of course, of course.
Yeah.
So we had three Nic Cage movies.
So I thought it would be nice to do a quick rundown of all the movies released since Renfield, which came out like April of 2023.
Right after that, you had Sympathy for the Devil, which you and I did watch together, right?
I got it on my shelf.
When you came down, I popped it in.
Yeah.
We had another movie called The Retirement Plan.
Oh, that’s right.
He plays the old guy who kicks a bunch of butts, like a Liam Neeson style thing.
That one I’d never heard of before.
I didn’t until an hour ago when I was putting together this list.
So you’ve seen it?
I haven’t seen it yet, no.
What did you think of Sympathy for the Devil?
Is that a top tier Nic Cage film?
It’s not top tier, but I thought it was really solid.
It was a cool.
His performance was pretty good.
Oh yeah, this is the thing, his performance is never terrible, but this one was right up his alley, right?
I thought it was pretty solid.
I gave it a 3.5 out of 5.
So after retirement plan, there was Dream Scenario.
Obviously, yeah.
And you saw that?
On my shelf as well, yeah.
Okay, good.
I actually ended up watching that for the second time.
I had seen it in theaters, but I bought it on Blu-ray when I came out.
I just looked at your Letterboxd today, I saw that 4-star rating there, Brian.
Yeah, I really, there’s something about that movie I really enjoy, even though I know it kind of like almost suffers about three quarters of the way through, it kind of feels a little janky maybe.
It was a weird kind of twist near the end.
I got to watch it again to really process it, yeah.
And then after that, you have Arcadian, which sort of again came out of nowhere, that’s just a tiny horror film.
Nic Cage is in it, barely.
Again, it’s just like Renfield where it just-
Was that one like a Shudder original, I think?
I could be making that up, but-
Possibly.
It feels kind of like in that same vein where he’s kind of like, I mean, without spoilers, like he’s not in it as much as you would think he’s in it.
It’s more like an extended cameo almost, right?
Really.
Yeah.
While still being important to the overall film.
And then after Arcadian, you have The Surfer, which again, I’d never heard of.
I’ve never heard of this one.
I’m just going to bring it up the Letterboxd page here and just read you the bio on it.
It says, What a man returns to his beachside hometown in Australia.
Many years since building life for himself in the US, he’s humiliated in front of his teenage son by a local gang of surfers who claim strict ownership over the secluded beach of his childhood.
Wounded, he decides to remain at the beach, declaring war against foes in control of the bay.
But as the conflict escalates, the stakes spin wildly out of control, taking him to the edge of his sanity.
And what better is Nic Cage than at the edge of his sanity?
I don’t even know if this movie is officially out.
It doesn’t say it’s streaming anywhere.
So it might be an upcoming theatrical release, but let me just take a quick peek here.
Theatrical release is slated, it only has Poll enlisted as December 6th of 2024.
It was premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May.
So that’s why it’s listed here before Longlegs.
But yeah, so that’s one to look forward to later on.
And then we’re here with Longlegs.
And I guess this is a good place as any to just give our standard spoiler warning.
If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re nervous about spoilers, we will talk about the film without a bandit.
Spoilers will just be interjected.
Evo will give you a half a second, sometime spoiler warning before we say something.
Be warned now.
If you haven’t seen Longlegs, I mean, please go ahead and watch it.
Like, definitely do not spoil yourself on this film.
It deserves to be seen first.
And oh, yeah, like, this is one of those movies.
It’s a smaller kind of, I don’t know what you call it, like low or mid budget kind of horror movie.
Or maybe it’s like more kind of crime thriller kind of.
I don’t know what the genre would be, or maybe it’s like multiple genres.
But yeah, this is exactly the kind of movie that needs that kind of groundswell support so we can get more movies like this, more original voices, original ideas.
This is exactly the kind, like Marvel movies are going to make a billion dollars.
Don’t worry about that.
You can wait to see those, but like Longlegs is exactly the kind of thing that needs that kind of upfront boost and numbers to really, so you can see more of this.
I want to say I lost my train of thoughts.
I was thinking about Nicolas Cage, but like unique voices and unique, different off the beaten path kind of stuff.
So two things, I guess, not to derail you here or get you back on the track.
I derailed myself.
The budget for this movie was slightly less than $10 million apparently.
So it is kind of like a mid-budget horror film, but yeah, the genre is not easy to peg down.
The box office of this movie is sitting at $62 million so far.
So this is effectively a runaway smash hit for the studio here.
It’s distributed by Neon.
I’m not sure if that makes much of a difference.
I’m not sure who actually made the film, but it’s written and directed by Perkins.
I think I mentioned that earlier.
Osgood Perkins, so I’m going to struggle on the same.
Perkins.
This is the easiest name in the world.
I know.
Sometimes I have difficulty.
John Smythe?
So I’m going to run through.
He’s only directed effectively four movies that have been released so far.
I think the other one I see here is maybe just a tiny, tiny film.
So I’m just going to start with the first one.
Let me know if you’ve watched these and what you thought of them.
The first one being The Black Coats Daughter.
I have not.
The stars Emma Roberts and Kiernan Shipka from 2015.
I saw this movie at least once and I gave it four stars.
It’s a really good film and I can’t remember all the details about it.
I wasn’t fully prepared to talk about it, but it’s good.
I think as a feature film directorial debut, VAD got him in the front door.
VAD got his foot in the door.
He would go on to direct a 2016 movie called I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House.
You haven’t seen that one?
I can’t say that I have.
This one I have also seen.
I gave it three stars.
This one I actually saw it out because sometimes you find an actor or actress, you’re kind of intrigued by this person.
The reason I watched this one is because it stars Ruth Wilson, who was in the TV series Luther, ages ago.
I was like, I really like this woman.
So I’m going to go watch some of the movies she did.
When you put in a movie, like a horror movie, that’s nice and short, 89 minutes, really easy to jump into it.
Bob Balaban is also in this movie, so it’s just like, yeah, I’m there for it.
Lucy Boynton, who I think has done other things too.
I can’t remember.
I’m sure she has.
Pale Blue Eye, I think, with Christian Bale.
Anyways, three star movie.
Event he did in 2020, Gretel and Hansel.
Have you seen this movie?
I’m literally hearing about these movies for the first time right now.
I need to get caught up on Os Perkins’ filmography here.
Without a doubt.
I think it’s like, unique enough, and he’s doing good things.
I haven’t seen this one.
My friend just mentioned it, said it was really good, so it’s sort of at the top of the watch list right now.
Afterwards, he is doing Longlegs in 2024.
That’s basically of those three movies that he did before, I remember at Longlegs, but he’s quite capable.
He’s quite capable here.
The second part I wanted to mention, because you said this is a horror movie, but it’s kind of like a crime film as well, and that’s one of the criticisms I saw here, where it was taking on too many elements mixed together, and the quote is, crime procedural, occult mystery, mind manipulation, satanic worship, scary dolls, a Faustian bargain, and a nun not fit for any convent.
And that’s a lot of, like any movie, like there’s been a couple of nun movies recently, and it’s like that’s exactly what they are.
They’re just a nun movie, right?
And it’s like, you could be any of those things, and occult mystery only, but here we have so many genres mixed together.
Like did that work for you for the film?
I think it worked for me for the most parts.
Yeah.
I think I need to watch it again.
I really enjoyed the movie.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression, because I gave this a really high rating, but like the whole movie was kind of, you know, there were comparisons.
Wrongfully so, I think.
I understand why they made the comparisons to things like Silence of the Lambs and Seven.
This is not Silence of the Lambs, it’s not Seven.
It’s not a bad thing.
It’s its own thing.
You can see that kind of influence.
Like the director explicitly mentioned that he was going for Silence of the Lambs motif at the beginning of the film, I think.
But it’s not, if you go in expecting Silence of the Lambs, you’re going to be, it’s going to throw off your perception of the film, right?
Yeah, you can’t really stand on the same level as that film.
Yeah.
So the thing that, I don’t know, I’m still kind of mulling over my head because by the end of the film, and spoilers, I think it’s clearly established that there are some supernatural powers at play, or I don’t know how ambiguous that was intended to be, or whether it was clear this was actually Satan or a demon working powers.
And to the whole movie, it was, there was nothing clearly supernatural happening, right?
Yeah, until the end.
And that was the only kind of thing that really got me, was like, if you’re going to make it supernatural, make it supernatural.
If you’re not, then not.
It was just like, at the end, it was like, it didn’t, it felt like you were trying to, you’re trying to mesh those two ideas together.
And it didn’t quite work for me, but maybe that’s, you know, additional viewings is going to come through, because they did make a point of mentioning the Manson family and that as well.
And the thing with Charles Manson was that, you know, he had such a hold over people, over his, quote unquote, his family, as he called them, that, you know, he could send them out on missions, as independent of himself, and they would do terrible things, like obviously the, you know, the murder of Sharon Tate, and those kind of things that happened.
So, you know, it could be argued that it wasn’t supernatural, that it was just like this guy was just so, that Longlegs, the killer, was so persuasive that he could, like, convince people to do murders on his behalf or commit murders, I guess.
You don’t do a murder, you commit a murder.
It’s kind of weird.
Do you ever do a murder on somebody to commit murders on his behalf?
So, I don’t know, the mixing of kind of, it just felt a little bit jarring in terms of how they mix the, for most of the movie, you could look at it and there’s no real supernatural elements or you could be written off as, like, unreliable narrators and people wanting to believe this stuff, believe in the occult specifically, but then at the end, it’s kind of revealed, it’s like, oh yeah, it is supernatural.
So it just felt a little bit kind of jarring, especially if you’re drawing comparisons to Silence of the Lambs and Seven, which were explicitly not supernatural in any way.
It was the evil was coming specifically from human beings.
It was all natural, made it a bit more scary.
And so that by the end to have is like, oh no, it was a demon controlling people’s minds.
Like, that’s not as scary to me as a Hannibal Lecter or John Doe, a human being capable of that kind of evil.
It’s like, oh, a demon is supposed to be evil.
And that’s the only real criticism I have of the film, or the only thing that didn’t really kind of jive with me.
But again, watching it again maybe with different eyes that might erode a bit.
I don’t know.
What were your thoughts on the genre mashing and the genre mixing in Longlegs?
Yeah, I think it was almost working at a subconscious level for me where the movie, it did feel a little jumbled because of that.
When you’re walking out of it, it’s just like, wow, I started watching this psychic FBI agent and I love that.
I love that angle.
That was a really cool twist.
The movie has the title cards halfway telling each chapter.
It was like, I don’t know if the changes in tone changed with each one by the end of the movie.
I’m just there accepting everything they’re telling me.
Like you said, it’s not as scary as him just being a serial killer.
Because you have the scene with Nic Cage, and I can’t remember the character’s name there.
David something Cobb, who was a three name.
As all good serial killers do, he had three names.
That’s right.
He basically kills himself in the interrogation room.
Basically, he does in perfect fashion.
Sometimes you just got to throw extra words in there just for the sake of it, I guess.
But the movie continues on and you’re like, oh, things aren’t quite resolved.
There’s actually multiple layers to peel back here.
That feels like, well, they just spent the whole movie going after this guy.
They got him and it doesn’t like he escapes or anything.
It’s not like there’s any extra murders that happened while he’s in custody or anything.
It’s just, he’s just dead.
In fact, we just keep going and we get some of these reveals that are hinted at maybe a bit earlier.
But for me, there’s no fear.
There’s no scariness there.
I’m not sure I felt any real scare throughout this movie at all, to be honest with you.
It’s just maybe if they lean more heavily into the serial killer aspect.
It kind of brings me to talk about Nic Cage as the serial killer.
I did see one piece of trivia here where he said this is the first and only time he’ll play a serial killer because he doesn’t like the violence of it, right?
But I had real difficult time accepting Nic Cage as the serial killer here.
What?
Even though I recognize the performance, I know he’s doing something really interesting, it’s at least like unique and innovative, it didn’t feel like it was familiar territory.
But I found that, I don’t know if I was just in on the meme of it all of like, because Nic Cage is kind of a meme person where everyone’s just like this guy, you know what I mean?
It’s like the Nic Cage effect for lack of ability to articulate it a better wherein I’m seeing this at a packed movie theater.
And I feel like when he shows up and he’s kind of like in the hardware store being a little kooky, I feel like I can hear people kind of like chuckling a little bit to themselves.
And I think that takes me out of it a bit where it’d be like, I’m watching Nicolas Cage play Serial Killer here.
When I watch, and I don’t want to make the comparison, it’s all I can do right now with like Signs of the Lambs.
And I see Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.
It’s like that is Hannibal Lecter on screen right there.
This person has terrified me.
But the Cage here, I’m just so aware of everything else he’s ever done and him as the actor doing this.
I think I was just distracted by it, honestly.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, you know exactly what I’m gonna say.
I loved it.
I loved his performance in this.
You know, I specifically, because I knew Nicolas Cage was gonna be in there, I specifically kind of turned a dial in my brain.
I was like, yeah, Nicolas Cage is gonna be in there.
I need to ignore that, specifically put that filter on almost.
I was like, look at the character.
And like, if you’re looking at, you know, what was it?
Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
I think Nicolas Cage kind of achieved the creepiness of that character.
And the makeup, I don’t know, I love the makeup.
It was super creepy, kind of borderline where he was like, obviously there was some, I don’t know, some kind of medical condition, or he just like, because he was living in a basement for like 30 years that you got no vitamin D, or maybe or something was going on with this guy.
But he like, he looked creepy as all heck.
And like, this cage did a great performance.
It just like, really just like, like you said, it wasn’t super scary.
I didn’t have any big jump scares.
But it was just like the whole movie was unsettling the whole way through.
And I guess in that sense, it’s kind of like, it reminded me more of something like Seven.
Which is like, it wasn’t like, there was that scene at the beginning where, was it Harker Lee?
Is that her name or Harkin Lee?
I can’t remember what the, it was Detective, not Detective, she’s FBI agent, Agent Lee.
Agent Lee Harker.
Lee Harker, I got it backwards.
Where she was like talking to her mom, but the way that the shot was framed, like the doorway behind her in the office was so prominent.
And you kept expecting somebody or something to walk through.
I was like, I was on, like simple framing like that, put me on the edge of my seat, basically playing on our knowledge of those kind of horror tropes.
Like, oh yeah, if you frame something in a certain way, you bring something that prominence in the background, like in that doorway, it’s like something’s gonna come through.
And like, that was super, every scene was super creepy.
And that interrogation scene where she goes in to confront Cobble, their Cobble pot, you know, I don’t know.
I thought it was, I thought it was well done.
It was the kind of the balance between the, there’s some subtlety in Nicolas Cage’s performance.
And then you go into what you hire Nicolas Cage to do, which is to do things that make decisions that other actors would just never make.
Yeah, and so I was like, but he was, he was super creepy that whole time.
When he went to the hardware store, super creepy when he was talking to, you know, Harker Lee, Lee Harker and her mom, super creepy.
It was just like, he got the creepiness down perfectly.
And even when he was doing like, he left the hardware store there and he was like singing, like mommy, daddy, in the car there is like, yes, some people were laughing at that, but I was like, I was watching like that.
That was super creepy to me.
I was like watching, it was like, it was something unsettling about that whole thing.
And for some people it might not work, some people can’t, you know, like Nicolas Cage is, he’s a larger than life character in real life, right?
So yeah, for some people it’s gonna be harder to suspend that disbelief.
But for me watching that, I knew he was in there, I had Nicolas Cage filter.
It’s like, just like certain people are gonna, you know, come, certain celebrities are gonna stand out more because they’re so well known, right?
So you have to kind of dial those filters in your brain to like kind of see past that.
But for me it works, I don’t know.
Yeah, and I think you said it earlier before, is like multiple viewings are gonna benefit this movie.
And I really, I honestly believe that’s gonna happen.
I think this movie is gonna get elevated for me on future watches.
Maybe just kind of knowing what I’m getting into and maybe I can look for more things throughout the film and just kind of maybe watch it, like privately without a bunch of young like teenagers in the theater with me, who are kind of like laughing at it more so than that.
Or maybe if I was just like in my head, maybe people were like wrestling because they were uncomfortable with, you know, he’s a super creepy dude, right?
And I don’t, I don’t deny that.
That’s what I was gonna say too, especially I find with younger audiences or young people in general, is like if something’s really unsettling or bothering them, the go-to kind of coping mechanism is to laugh instead of, you know, engage with it and it’s like, oh, this kid is a great human.
We’re gonna laugh it off.
I remember this going back to my day’s teaching back in the day when I was in my placements and then we were gonna watch a movie with the class, Dead Poets Society, and spoilers for that film, there’s a, one of the students commits suicide near the end of the film.
It’s a huge event catalyst.
And the teacher I was in a placement with, she said specifically like, you know, this scene, you’re gonna see a lot of, you’re gonna hear like a lot of comments and kids are gonna joke around at that scene and you know, it’s gonna be laughter and they’re gonna try to make light of it because that’s their coping mechanism.
Cause it’s a dark, something difficult to process, especially seeing someone in their own age going through something like that.
And sure enough, watching the movie with the class, that, you know, that dark, serious scene, and then like kids were like, you know, making comments and cracking jokes and laughing.
And you know, the teacher wasn’t getting mad at them or telling them to quiet down.
It’s like, no, like this is how they were kind of processing something so dark.
So when I look at, you know, watching, you know, a theater full of full of, especially younger people and like seeing something creepy or scary, and they’re laughing at it.
Like to me, to me, I see that same kind of thing where it’s like this kind of coping mechanism, right?
It’s like, if they see something really scary, they’re going to like, oh, we make light of it instead.
We laugh at it instead of engaging with that.
So that to me is like, yeah, watching.
And I think that’s not a knock against teenagers or younger people.
That’s just like, where are you at?
You’re at kind of in your kind of cognitive development cycle.
You know, I think it hits different movies and different stories and different plot points hit differently.
They get different ages.
And I want to, yeah, that’s a good point.
That’s a heck of a tangent, sorry.
But no, it just struck me as like, you know, it’s a way to deal with the horrors to laugh it off instead of engaging with it, right?
Yeah, I think that’s important because like horror movies and different scenes, and you said there’s so many different factors of play, people are going to react differently.
And when you go to a movie theater, you have a good mix of people and ages and life experiences.
And that’s part of the joy of seeing movies with other people like that, is you get to sort of live through them a little bit, like you get to experience it yourself, but you’re also picking up on their experience and how they’re reacting to it as well.
And sometimes like I remember going to see, I know what you did last summer way back in the 90s.
And it’s like you talk about like a rowdy crowd watching a horror movie and having a blast when you’re doing it.
So like that movie is massively elevated by mind because you just absorb like everyone is just having fun with this, right?
But I want to go back to a scene you sort of described earlier.
I think it’s one of the most tense scenes for me, at least, was when she’s in her home, it’s framed with the door in the background.
And this is so classic now, especially like if you’re on TikTok or something, and people are creating their own horror skits and short horror videos, then something will inevitably like poke their head around the door frame.
You’re trained to look at the door frame.
You’re looking for something to move there.
Nothing ever moves, but you hear the knock at the door rustling outside.
She has this psychic flash of something coming, like somebody coming to the house.
And you get that heavy wooden knock on the door.
That’s a jump scare right there.
The lady next to me, I could feel her tits up there when that knock happened, like great sound design.
And to me, that whole sequence was so scary because she’s an FBI agent.
She has her gun.
She gets her gun ready.
She opens the door.
She yells out at the door.
She opens it up.
She goes outside.
And you’re like, my gosh.
She’s a figure there too, right?
What’s that?
She sees a figure too, I think, right?
Yeah, she sees a figure and she sort of goes in that direction.
And it’s all kind of a misdirect.
And she eventually gets back in her house.
And one of the letters is sitting on her desk where she was just sitting.
Incredibly unsettling because it’s just that invasion of privacy that someone was now in your home.
That you knew they were there.
They know where you were.
They were leading you outside.
They got you back inside.
All this stuff, like super, super creepy, unsettling.
And then she gets the code.
And basically, this is kind of one of the, almost like, one of the elements that was like jammed in there too much maybe was like the zodiac style encrypted messages, right?
Where it’s like, Longlegs just gives her the decryption key so that she unlocks the puzzle.
Where when you’re watching the first bit of the movie, you’re like, well, this is going to be like a central tenet of the film.
And it’s resolved like 30 minutes in.
They don’t need to decrypt anymore.
She’s got the key.
Yeah.
Well, I think that was kind of a neat twist on the zodiac killer thing, because I think what he was really doing, you know, Longlegs was actually, as we find out later, because he was living in her basement the whole time, making those creepy, evil, demon dolls in his basement.
Yeah.
But he was kind of testing her, I think, right?
Because he gives her the code to crack.
Or he gives like the cipher to crack his code, the messages he’s been leaving, kind of Zodiac killer style.
And her boss, played by Blair Underwood, he asked her, like, oh, how did you crack this code?
She doesn’t tell him.
She could have told him, it’s like, oh, the killer is at my house.
Or, you know, I think he was at the house, but he left this code, the cipher.
I think it was a test, right?
So I think there was always this kind of gray area where Lee was kind of in between, or she was like, she doesn’t quite belong in this world.
And I think, you know, like the idea that her mother and her surrogate father apparently were kind of pulling her towards the evil side of things, even subconsciously, she was kind of maybe, I think it was maybe implied even that subconsciously she was even working on their behest or like to make things advantageous for them, right?
And Longlegs specifically threatened Lee’s mother, saying, if you tell anyone of this happening, like she’s gonna die.
Well, I think it plays into why she doesn’t tell her colleague like what happened there.
But the other point of the note is that they were nonsense, right?
Like when your calling card is an encrypted message, you’re like, oh my goodness, if we decrypt these, we’re gonna get onto this person’s trail.
Well, she decrypts all of them, and they’re just nonsense.
They’re completely irrelevant to the killings, everything, right?
Which I think is also kind of this nice, it was just a nice different thing to do.
Because she can literally say, he’s like, well, was there anything interesting in them?
She’s like, no.
She’s not telling a lie or anything.
She’s like, no, they’re really not relevant to our investigation.
It’s just there to mess around with people, right?
I think that’s a power play on Longlegs himself.
He’s just like, oh yeah, I’m gonna do these.
You’re not gonna catch me for 40 years.
You’re gonna have all these messages that are impossible to decrypt.
And when you do, it doesn’t matter.
It’s just like, it’s not gonna give shit any more light on my character.
I thought I was smart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like that whole element, that was an interesting kind of twist.
There was a huge buildup too to see before they revealed what Longlegs actually looked like.
I thought that was interesting, kind of building up in the audience’s mind when you finally see him.
And I would never have guessed that’s what he would have looked like.
But that was kind of a cool twist too, like letting that kind of…
The whole film was kind of more like a slow simmer rather than, you know…
Well, the atmosphere throughout the film is really incredible.
Yeah.
Like every scene is just…
.
masterfully put together, yeah.
Like even the intro scene where, you know, they go out with their partner, it’s like there’s a killer out there, and they’re going to canvas door to door to be like, have you seen this person?
And she shows up, she’s looking at the houses, she’s like, he’s at that house right over there.
And then her partner goes to it.
And it’s that, I mean, for me, it was a jump scare.
It was just like, I hate those moments.
He gets shot, and it was just like, just the immediate, like, death of it all, like the suddenness, really, I think over the years, like disturbs me.
It’s like, it’s the same thing in the, I think I should spoil it, for The Departed.
What?
Right?
Damn it, Brian.
Spoiler, spoiler for, like, a 20-year-old movie at this point, but it’s the same kind of thing, just that sudden shock of death like that, that’s just, it’s unsettling.
But then she, she’s getting promotions, and she’s going in, like, hard on the case now, because she’s basically psychic, and they, I love that they have, like, at the ready, tests to give her, to see, like, is she actually psychic?
It’s like, I love that idea of that, you know, even in real life here, I fully believe that these agencies would, like, implement these tests just to see, just to, we can’t rule everything out, right?
And I like, I like the idea here.
It’s like, let’s see if this person actually is psychic, and goddamn she is.
Well, I like that they, because I mentioned before, like, that might be seen as a supernatural element, but I was, in my mind, it was a bit more ambiguous, right?
Because she got, like, whatever it was, like, four out of 10 right or something, or four out of eight rights.
So it was, like, it was higher than average, but it wasn’t, like, every single thing.
So I was reading her more, I was like, you know how in Hannibal, the TV series, where Will Graham, it was, like, his, like, empathy disorder, where he was, like, super, he could just, like, put himself in another person’s shoes and really anticipate what they were going to do.
So that’s why I was kind of reading her.
It was, like, it could be supernatural, but it could also just be, like, she’s just super intuitive, right?
And it’s just, like, she’s picking up, maybe subconsciously, on clues that other people aren’t seeing.
So, like, that’s why that wasn’t as jarring for me as, like, you know, like all of Cobble’s talk or Longlegs talk about is, like, Satan and demons, like, okay, that’s just you being crazy and playing off that satanic panic from the 70s or the 80s when the whole thing was going on.
But then, no, at the end, it’s like, then it’s, like, full-blown, it’s like, no, demons, the demon doll works.
And I was like, okay, that wasn’t a lot, because some of the elements were subtle and some elements were just like, okay, over the top like that.
It just totally was a bit different.
But again, I don’t know, but it was one watch, right?
So it was really interesting.
I love that dichotomy between us here.
And I think it goes back to our discussion on the Night House, where we got kind of different readings out of it with the same effect, right?
Where it’s like, I am fully into the supernatural.
If you explain to me that this is a demon here, tell me more about the demon, his name, the history, everything, I fully believe it.
I am on board.
It’s over here, like Longlegs once revealed.
It’s like, oh yeah, there’s these silver balls inside these doll heads.
And there’s nothing, that’s fine.
And then when they actually blow one up later, this black cloud comes out of the ball, but also the back of her head.
And that must be a connection.
It’s like, for me, I’m fully on board.
It’s like, okay, well, this is supernatural.
The mind control that we mentioned about quote before, it’s all there.
Like I have no problem just being fully on board for that stuff, right?
I don’t have a problem with it in the movie.
It was just jarring with the rest of the movie.
If they played up that supernatural element more explicitly earlier, it just didn’t feel as woven in.
It felt a little bit jarring to me.
But I don’t know.
Most, 90% of the movie worked really well for me.
Like the whole, I love a good kind of procedural crime thriller.
I love a good horror movie.
It was nice to see.
Watching, I realized in the 90s and early 2000s, that was a big genre, right?
I think, obviously, Silence of the Lambs and The Seven.
But then there’s all the, Along Came a Spider and all those ones with, I think, Ashley Judd was in a bunch of those movies, or Morgan Freeman did a couple.
It was a pretty big genre.
It feels like it kind of died off a little bit, and this feels like a nice kind of return to form.
I believe, like you mentioned, the Satanic Pettig, and I believe I saw somewhere about, this movie was set in 94, 95.
It ran at the very, very tail end.
It was set at that time very specifically as like, oh, these characters would have lived through that panic, and this is like the final remnants of it.
Yeah, everything was kind of like with purpose, I guess, there.
And it’s also kind of this thing where I can’t get it out of my head, but it’s like, they have cell phones, but not like all the time, right?
It’s just like old cell phone technology.
They’re bulky enough where you can’t just carry it around into your pocket, right?
And it creates this tension because the two of them go out, they travel a long distance to go to this barn and investigate one of the scenes of the murders.
And it’s like, they’re not necessarily within easy range.
They’re not just a phone call away from local authorities.
It’s like, no, they’re out there and they’re uncovering creepy dolls that are buried, that have silver balls in their heads.
It’s just so, so weird.
I love that part.
I love the doll stuff too.
Well, those dolls are super creepy.
And I love that they would do an MRI scan on everything they find in the doll.
It’s just like, anything could be in there.
Nothing.
It’s just nothing at all.
It feels like I’m wearing nothing at all.
And then you have the mother who is kind of helping the demon Longlegs or the demon itself deliver these dolls to people that, you know, one literal deal with the devil.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like unwrapped.
It’s like takes over the minds of somebody in the house who kills everybody.
And it’s like, yeah, it’s just, that’s another layer where you’re like, oh my goodness.
And then they sort of reveal that, yeah, Longlegs has just been in your mom’s basement for the past 20 years.
It’s just like that guy you saw in this memory that you’ve kind of suppressed, that was him.
It’s just like, it’s just, I don’t know.
That’s where it just gets to be like, I agree with some of the sentiment there.
It’s just like, maybe it’s just too much, but maybe it’s not.
I don’t know.
I’m kind of undecided on it.
I do need those multiple viewings.
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
I found there was some interesting religious commentary or commentary on religion where the mother would dress up as a nun, and the way they deliver the dolls, these evil demon dolls that would force families to kill each other, or essentially would force the father to kill the family and then himself.
But she would dress up as a nun and tell them that they won some kind of contest from the local church.
And that’s how they would welcome inside, because of course, it’s a nun, right?
It’s a nun.
You win a prize from a church.
It’s super disarming, right?
People will let you into their house.
And I thought that was like, okay, this is an interesting kind of commentary on religion, how it seems so benign, but it can be weaponized to use to spread these kind of evil ideas, right?
Or like, you know, it’s like anything.
It can be, there’s a double edged sword where, you know, this evil message was being brought by somebody who seemed super nice and seemed like they were, you know, part of the community.
And so just like that, that idea of like, just being necessarily being wary of every single person, but just like if your spider sense is tingling, something’s not right, you know, to kind of, you know, think critically about, you know, the situation you’re in and who you’re talking to, and not just accept people because of, you know, how they’re dressed or how they, how they present themselves, right?
It was interesting to see that kind of intersection between the satanic and the godly and how they were kind of used in tandem to commit these murders, right?
One of the other elements is the families all involve a girl who was born on the 14th of any given month.
And I feel like this may be one of the weaker parts of the film where I’m not sure if it was supposed to be like a twist surprise, but it’s like, Oh my goodness, she was born on the 14th of the month.
And guess what?
Her partner has a daughter we meet earlier who talks about birthdays.
And oh my goodness, they’re targeted as the family that’s going to be sacrificed.
What are the odds?
What are the odds, right?
It’s one of those moments where it’s just like, guys, I’m kind of rolling my eyes here.
There’s not enough characters in the movie here.
But this is surprising.
And it’s like, you just telegraphed it so hard at the beginning of the film.
It’s just like, everyone’s birthday is on the 14th.
It’s just like, give me a break.
Yeah, it would be easier to count the number of people in the film whose birthdays weren’t on the 14th.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
I was just going to switch up a little bit.
I was like, the other FBI agent, the lady who’s going with her to her mom’s place, who’s dropping her off, the shotgun kill in the car was absolutely un-selling because it’s just like, it’s just that thing where maybe, yeah, she’s like this agent.
She’s looking forward.
She’s looking to see if anything’s going on in the house.
She’s not checking the side of the mirror.
I was not expecting that.
And then you can pans back to her and you see the mother in the habit that is the nun’s clothing in the mirror.
Like, oh no.
Yeah.
It was really bad.
For some reason that one was like really unsettling to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s like, we just know someone is like, OK, their face kind of sealed and they don’t, they can’t do anything about it.
We’re just like, you want to shout out the screen is like, just turn around.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And it’s not just one shot.
She does one shot.
Then she goes to the other side of the car and gives her another shot.
It’s just like, oh, damn, guys.
Damn.
It’s cool.
She just happened to be the one who drew the short straw to drive this this girl home.
Yeah.
And that’s, as I get older, that is the stuff that scares me the most.
It’s just like the randomness of some of the acts of violence.
I bet she was only one week away from retirement, too.
Oh, my goodness.
What else did I have written down about this?
I think we kind of covered everything on my list here.
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about with this movie?
Yeah, that last scene culminates when she goes over to her boss’ house, and the doll’s already there, and you can clearly see the he and his wife are kind of hypnotized where they’re talking.
It seems like they don’t want to do this, but it’s like, let’s go to the kitchen and cut some cake.
You won’t be coming back.
Like, Lee just seems like she just lets him go knowing that he’s going to kill her, and the whole scene was like, you’re not going to do anything to try and stop your boss, who’s clearly kind of hypnotized or brainwashed from killing.
Take out your handcuffs, slap some handcuffs on this guy, try to stop what’s going to happen.
I was like, what is going on here?
So you’re just going to let it play out and just try to talk to him a little bit before he goes, murders everybody.
Yeah, I was like, I don’t know.
She was obviously stressed out with her mom, and finding out her mom made a deal with the devil and was part of this decades-long murder spree.
But you’re right there, there’s a little girl, and it’s like they’re walking calmly to the kitchen where you know that he’s talking about cutting the cake and it really means he’s cutting hers.
Like, come on, Lee, do something.
You had the power to…
They did not have to die.
Those murders, those deaths were on Lee.
I’m sorry.
Without a doubt.
Like, I almost feel like I’ve been a little too negative on the film, but like we talked about some of the atmosphere and like the tension on screen.
Like, I just want to say I was fully engaged with this movie through.
Oh, yeah.
I started to finish and I was like on board with so much of it.
And maybe it was just sort of like walking out.
And for me, I mentioned not like kind of Nic Cage almost taking me out of the movie a bit, which I think will be resolved on future viewings.
But like you want to talk about it like just the slow, like ability, the slow scenes that allow you to absorb everything that’s happening, like some of the tension that’s happening on screen.
Pacing was really good.
Pacing was masterful, really.
If I like it was just like you let the scenes breathe, you let that tension build in each scene.
It wasn’t a bunch of quick cuts like, yeah, I know the editing was good.
Just like the way the cinema talked, the way things were framed.
We talked about that once in the beginning, but I love that scene where she’s, simple scene where she’s in the FBI office there, got all the files spread out on the floor and everything.
But just like the way things were, things were always just like, it was very visually appealing, but things were just slightly off, like the lighting and everything.
Then when she goes to talk to that girl, in the insane asylum, that whole scene was insane and incredibly, like I thought for sure Lee was going to get attacked there.
She was going to lose some kind of body part or something.
But from his, I can’t remember who that was.
It was like a victim of his or something of Longlegs or a former.
I can’t remember what their relationship was.
But then you find out later that she, because Longlegs went and visited her.
And the next day she committed suicide because of something he said.
But that whole scene was fantastic.
And there were bits of humor in there too that were great to break up that tension a little bit.
Like when they go to that asylum and they’re like, oh, do you have logs to see people signing in and out of this place?
It’s like, no, no, we really should do that though.
That’s a good idea.
Yeah, I was like…
Yeah, the cameras, it’s like, you have cameras, it’s like, we have a log, but people just write it down.
And it’s just like, oh, we should put cameras in here, maybe.
You think?
It probably helps with the time too, like the time frame, just like, yeah, it’d probably be a considerable expense putting the closed circuit camera system into it.
I wonder if that’s a commentary on, at the time, it’s like, oh yeah, nowadays our views of security are probably different than they were, you know, 30 years ago.
That doesn’t sound, doesn’t feel right.
Oh, that would feel really awful.
That’s, the scariest thing was that 1994 was 30 years ago.
Yeah, I remember 1994 well.
I do think, I think we need to talk more about the, kind of the centerpiece of the whole film too, was Nic Cage’s performance.
When he’s captured, the whole police station thing, and especially when it’s like, you wheel in the portable cart with the old CRT TV, and you’re watching, like, the interview, like, the rest of the FBI agents along with Lee, is watching that, and you’re like, of course they do the classic, and I love this, what they do, it’s like, freeze frame, pause the tape, it’s kind of jittery on screen.
Nic Cage is like, mid-expression, it’s just, they’re having a conversation, or trying to, in front of this really disturbing image of this guy.
It was just, yeah, disturbing is the word, and it looked like he was looking at, I think, her boss there, played by Blair Underwood, I think it was, like, it gets, it was like, foreshadowing that he kind of picked him out as well, but like, yeah, that was, I hate when they do that, because that creeps me the heck out every time.
I know it’s coming, I know they’re doing it.
But his rambling, that whole performance, and then when he, in the interrogation, when he’s talking about all this stuff, and about Satan and the man downstairs, and doing all this stuff, you know, choice between crimson and clover, and like, all this weird, nonsensical, kind of cult-like rambling, then I know where he just, like, starts banging his face on the table and caving in his own skull.
Like, he comes up with that one shot, and his, like, his nose is, like, caved in or kind of gone.
And something about seeing the empty nasal cavity there always gets you, right?
And he just keeps banging his head on the table and kills himself in front of her.
Such a brutal scene, so disturbing.
And what is it, Maika Monroe who plays Lee?
She’s fantastic.
Yeah, yeah.
She’s obviously channeling a lot of, you know, Clarice Sterling from Sons of the Lambs.
You know, Jodie Foster’s, you know, iconic performance.
I think that was an obvious influence there.
But yeah, like that whole, she seems unsettled the whole time.
She seems kind of off balance the whole time.
And it just like, yeah, like the atmosphere and the tone of this movie was just so, it wasn’t out and out scary all the time.
It was just so unsettling the whole time.
I was watching, I got home and I was just like, I don’t want to turn the lights off.
Like, it was just like, yeah.
I was just going to shout out a couple films with like a couple horror movies here.
Obviously, it follows.
Everyone’s probably seen this by now.
I had no idea that was the same.
This is the thing.
She’s like a chameleon.
Like, I saw her then when she was doing the red carpets.
I was like, that’s the same person who was in the movie?
What are you talking about?
How is that even possible?
She did a movie a couple years ago called Watcher.
Pretty solid.
I think I gave it a three and a half for what it’s worth.
And a hearty recommendation for two movies, one called The Guests, 2014.
I don’t know.
Sort of a horror, more of a tense thriller perhaps with Dan Stevens.
Really good film.
And the one that I really want to recommend, which was also recommended to me a little while ago, was called Significant Other from 2022 with Maika in it.
Very few actors.
It almost feels like one of these closely shot COVID movies around that time.
And it was just really effective.
A lot of creepy stuff in the woods.
Interesting things happening.
Super good.
I gave it a three and a half.
Invo, its average is about 2.8 on Letterboxd.
If you get a chance to watch that, I definitely recommend checking it out if you want to see more of her films.
I do.
Definitely.
Are we almost ready for ratings at this point?
I think we’re good to go with ratings, yeah.
Yeah.
So we’re going to play the old ratings guessing game quickly.
Play along at home if you dare.
See how close you get.
See if you can beat Nathan on guessing these ratings.
This shouldn’t be too hard.
Last time it was Verizon, I think we did, and I was completely off, not even close.
Like by double digits, I think, in some cases.
You might be a little more accurate with this one.
I have a feeling.
I’ve got a good feeling on you on this one.
Okay.
First site, we go to Ron Tomato Critic.
This is the percentage of critics who saw the movie favorably.
87.
Super close.
It’s 85%.
Okay.
And the Ron Tomato audience score on this movie.
Guessing higher at 92.
No, I want to knock that back down.
Either way, 62%.
62, really?
I would have thought this would be more like an audience kind of versus critical.
Yeah, we were.
That is.
Oh, I’m really surprised at that.
The IMDB uses a 10 point scale.
What’s its user average?
7.4.
Super close.
7.2.
Oh, there we go.
I have a good feeling about this one.
And finally, Letterboxd, which uses the five star system.
What’s its user’s average on this?
3.3.
Very close.
3.5.
3.5.
Oh, nice.
I think you got your finger on the pulse on this one, except for if it was raw tomato audience members.
I don’t know what they’re thinking.
Yeah.
Get them out of here.
Get those scores out of here.
Tell them to redo their scores.
We got to know our ratings on this film.
We use the five star system as well with a possible like heart bonus on top.
What did you give Longlegs?
Yeah.
I gave this one four to five.
Respectable.
Yeah.
This was above average for me.
That’s just above average.
That sounds like such a weak compliment.
Like four to five.
To me, that’s a great film.
Yes.
Like I said, I think the only thing that’s holding it back is just the incongruence of the supernatural elements with some of the earlier kind of narrative where it was not really telegraphing supernatural stuff, but there was so much to take in between all the plots and this idea, like all the world building and mythology of the satanic rituals, and this Longlegs character and Nicolas Cage’s performance.
But man, there’s so much to love about this movie.
Don’t go in expecting Silence of the Lambs, don’t go in expecting Seven.
I understand the comparison, I understand the influence, but you’re comparing your, you’re trying to compare this like the very best of the best of the genre.
It’s not going to do any movie any favors.
Go in kind of with a blank slate, kind of a clean slate, don’t compare it to Silence of the Lambs, and I think you’re going to enjoy this a lot more.
If you go in expecting Silence of the Lambs, any movie, if you go in expecting Silence of the Lambs, which was a five time Academy Award winner, you’re kind of setting yourself up for disappointment.
So this is a great movie.
I can’t wait to pick this up on home video.
You are living in the 90s, truly.
I got all the 90s in the brain now.
Coming to a VHS store near you.
I can’t wait to rent this from Blockbuster when it comes out.
But yeah, I highly recommend this movie.
Great, like I said before, great movie, great mid-budget movie, unique voice.
This is exactly the kind of movie that needs our support so we can keep getting these kind of movies that people say they keep wanting, right?
So yeah, four to five for me.
What was your score on this, Brian?
I gave this movie three and a half stars.
I thought you were going to be higher than me.
This is crazy.
Oh, like, yeah, it’s difficult.
And I mean, four stars is a certain threshold where it’s like, I think this movie will get there.
I’ve mentioned it a couple of times.
I think you mentioned it two or it’s like, subsequent viewings are going to enhance this film.
And I fully expect it.
I can’t wait until this movie comes out.
I’m going to either buy it.
There’s so many details I want to go back and see.
Yeah, I want to see it again.
And I think it’ll just climb and score.
I think for me, the biggest takeaway when I was walking out of the theater was like, I couldn’t handle the Nic Cage.
I didn’t have that dial that switched to my head like you had your Nic Cage filter turned on.
I think I forgot to switch that one.
But I was just like, I can’t even right now what he’s doing with his stuff.
The good news is you’re going to have at least 10 other Nic Cage performances this year.
So one of them will land with you for sure.
That’s the beauty of Nic Cage.
If you don’t like one, you’re going to like another one.
He just does so much stuff.
Everyone gets a Nic Cage film that they love.
You get a Nic Cage film and you get a Nic Cage film.
I think that’s all I have to say on the movie.
If you have any last words.
Yeah, just one very important message for people and that is hail Satan.
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