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‘Longlegs’ Review: Nicolas Cage Worms His Way Into Your Nightmares With Dread-Filled Serial Killer Thriller
Osgood Perkins' horror movie 'Longlegs' disturbs more over time than it does in the moment, getting scary once its boogeyman embeds in your head.
Like that early screen vampire, Longlegs puts us on edge with his twisted body language and exaggerated gestures — that, plus odd framing that crops him off at the head, explains how the character manages to worm his way into our brains. Visually, audiences can scarcely tell it’s Cage beneath all that makeup: With his stringy white hair, pasty foundation and faded pink uniform, he look less like a man than an androgynous cross between Bette Davis in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” and kindly character actor Celia Weston, who played the mom in “Junebug.” These are hardly your typical horror archetypes, and yet, once the film’s ultimate scheme is revealed, it leaves a more unsettling imprint. Rather than recycling the genre’s boilerplate elements, Perkins strips away most of the procedural bits and concentrates on distinguishing details: the eccentric mental hospital chief who dresses like a pimp, or the girl at the hardware store who might have been a victim in another movie, but instead deflates Longlegs’ menace when she quips, “Dad, that gross guy’s here again!”
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