It’s not Se7en or Silence of the Lambs but it is a worthy grandchild of those movies.
A direct descendent perhaps of Fallen as it comes complete with its own song. T. Rex’s Bang A Gong takes the place of The Rolling Stones Time is on My Side.
And Nic Cage delivers again as the movie’s satanic serial killer. IMDB claims this flick cost $10 million and that Cage got half of it as his fee. … worth it.
As I have said before, I believe in Nic Cage.
Everyone else is either effectly creepy, like Alicia Witt who plays the weird mom of our hero or Keirnan Shipka as one of Longlegs surviving victims.
Or they are blank slates like FBI Agents Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) and Agent Carter (Blair Underwood).
Harker has story reasons to be the way she is but Underwood’s character is underserved and undercooked here. He does great but he need more opportunities to show off his chops.
The movie speeds through the investigation, burns up the plot and almost never stops to do anything else.
I like a lean movie as much as the next guy but you should still stop and smell the roses just a bit before you draw the curtain.
There is one unique scene in a store but that only serves one side of the equation.
Ok I’ll give you an example. You know what the best scene in Nope is? It’s the monkey goes crazy and kills people at the sitcom scene. You know why? Cause it comments on and informs everything else that happens in that movie. It’s an essential element of the movie.
And that’s what was missing here. I don’t know how you do that with this but at the very least before the end we should have gotten to go to an Agent Carter cookout or learned something about him that transformed him from a plot point and into a real character.
But, my writer guy gripes aside, this is a pretty phenomenal horror movie.
It looks great and there is definitely something under the surface. How many scenes feature prominent portraits of US Presidents? I noticed it three times I think. What is writer/director Oz Perkins trying to say there?
Beyond just giving you the time period the scene takes place.
Am I just reading too much into it? Certainly possible.
And I know that I have failed to really describe this movie but I’m going to give it a shot.
I want you to picture the outcast kid in your high school. The one with stringy hair, who wrote pentagrams on his or her notebook and generally got as much attention as he or she could by claiming they could reach out and touch demonic forces.
Maybe she started a coven. Maybe he got too into poetry.
Now imagine the screenplay they would write.
That’s Longlegs.
Dark Highways 
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