Who’s the Birthday Girl?

I’ve been sitting on reviewing this film for a while. That’s because Longlegs is a very weird movie that, despite its quiet, contemplative (albeit very creepy) atmosphere, has a lot to digest that kept me from just instantly writing a review about the film. I honestly wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, or even what all my thoughts on the film were. The film is very strange, in no small part because it has Nicholas Cage in it, and it sets up a lot without necessarily paying off everything quite the way you’d expect. It’s just… so weird.

Written and directed by Osgood Perkins, who most recently wrote and directed The Monkey, Longlegs grabbed much attention back when it was released in 2024. Praise was given to the very strange performance from Nicholas Cage, who goes for broke in the role of the movie’s villain. But a strange performance from Cage isn’t all this film has to offer. It feels like a riff on FBI serial killer stories, mixed with strange paranormal storytelling, hints at the occult, and, well, a lot more. And the film doesn’t really want you to understand everything. It wants you to sit and think and try to parse what it has going on. It requires something from the viewer for you to get the most out of the experience.

That makes it a very interesting watch. It’s not instantly manic and delightful like The Monkey. In fact, I think if I had seen Longlegs first before going into The Monkey I might have had very different expectations for the latter film. This film feels so strange, almost alien, that it casts a different light on Perkins’s writing and directorial ambitions, and it makes me much more curious about what else the writer / director has done. I’m pretty sure I have other films from him in my collection that I hadn’t gotten to yet and now I want to delve in… realizing I’ll probably need a bit of time to digest them afterwards.

In 1974, in a small town in Oregon, a young girl is visited by a very strange man (eventually known as Longlegs, played by Nicholas Cage), who says he has something for her on her birthday. Years later, FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is brought onto the Longlegs case after an investigation she was previously one turned south. She was sent to investigate houses for a possible serial killer, and she somehow knew which house the killer was in (although her partner, despite warning, didn’t listen to her caution and ended up dying because of it). Lead Agent William Carter (Blair Underwood) thinks that her insight, and possible clairvoyance, might be the key to breaking the Longlegs case.

The case in question is about young girls, all of whom have a birthday on the 14th of a month. Within six days, ahead of or after their birthdays, their fathers suddenly turn violent and go on a killing spree, killing everyone else in the family including, in most cases, the young girl. Coded letters in some kind of strange writing (possibly Satanically coded) appear at the crime scenes. No one knows what is going on or why, but almost as soon as Lee is brought into the case she starts making breakthroughs, putting pieces together and seeing connections no one else had seen. Is this because of her clairvoyance, or is it because Lee also has a birthday on the 14th, and somehow she has a deeper connection to Longlegs than even she could know?

As I noted, Longlegs is a very strange movie. I’d liken it to one-half FBI serial killer investigation film, like something David Fincher would make, along with one-half a Satanic possession movie. The two halves, when to tie together well, do wonders for the story. It creates this sense of narrative momentum, and inevitability as the pieces slowly stick together and the case reveals itself. Watching Lee slowly fall into this case, almost as if she were baited into a trap, leads to some very satisfying twists and turns in the storytelling.

At the same time, though, it doesn’t always feel like the film is quite able to bring all its ambitions together properly. The film early on makes it clear that Lee has a part to play in this story, that she’s not on the case by random chance (her seeming powers, as well as her birthday, underline that) but by the climax of the film the story both over explains and undersells all the narrative twists, leading to an ending that isn’t quite as satisfying as I would have liked. Certainly I’m not going to spoil what happens, but I do feel like there’s a step or two missing at the end that might have added some clarity, or some hidden nuance, that I felt like I was missing after watching the film.

Maybe that was the point, though. We certainly complain about films that feel the need to hold your hand and explain everything too much, revealing far too much of the story and not letting you figure some stuff out on your own. The ending has a certain ambiguity to it that I both appreciate and also am annoyed by, and I have the feeling like Perkins did that on purpose. They wanted you hooked in, but they also wanted to leave you with a nagging feeling as the film comes to its end, wanting more that will never come just so it drags you back again to it.

The highlight of the film is certainly Nicholas Cage, who is in the film for no more than ten minutes but absolutely steals the spotlight whenever he’s around. Dressed androgynously, coated with prosthetics and makeup, Cage’s Cageiness still manages to shine through. The actor goes all in on this weird, possibly Satanic, serial killer, with a strange set of verbal tics, line deliveries, and movements of his body. It’s a scenery chewing performance on the order of Face/Off, only toned down by the fact that he’s not the lead of the film but its weird, quirky monster.

I wasn’t as big a fan of Monroe in this film as her performance feels weirdly stilted in ways that didn’t quite sit with me on first viewing. I think that was intentional, though, because she’s not quite the character you’re expecting once everything is said and done. There’s more to her, and to her story, than you first know, and her performance is pitched to that. Her character, like the film around her, isn’t at all what audiences were expecting, and it leaves you feeling off-kilter with her character in a way that is clearly intentional, even if it doesn’t feel right on first viewing.

I think that’s a key thing about Longlegs, though: you’re not meant to just view it once. It’s such a strange, creepy movie with so much going on that you can’t absorb it all the first time through. You’re meant to go back with what you know about the story and watch it again to see if you catch details and understand things differently. That’s certainly my plan, now that I’ve finished digesting the film. I have to go back at some point, watch it again, and see if my understanding of everything has changed. The film feels like it’s pushing me to do that, and I know I will soon enough.

I don’t know that this film would be for everyone, even for one viewing let alone several. It’s strange and off-putting in ways that audiences probably would want or expect. But I liked it, creepy as it is, because it’s different. It’s an interesting film with a tone I couldn’t predict, and that makes it a rare thing. Cinema is easy to predict most of the time, but with Longlegs Perkins defied my expectations and left me feeling weird afterwards. I’m not used to that… and I kind of want to experience that again.