A Satanic Portrait of a Serial Killer

Maika Monroe in "Longlegs"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

When it comes to movies that mix crime-thrillers with horror, there’s so much potential to craft something that sticks with the audience because you have two genres come together that can depict disturbing acts of which people can be capable.  Whether it’s Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” David Fincher’s “Seven,” or the latter’s based-on-a-true-story “Zodiac,” these movies absorb you in the narratives of their characters as you watch them traverse the dangers of what the worst of humanity has to offer.

Writer-director Osgood Perkins is the latest filmmaker to do this with his horror-thriller, “Longlegs,” a film that’s awash in atmosphere, has great scares, and is boosted by two great lead performances, especially a very disturbing villain.

Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a special agent for the FBI in Oregon.  When she’s assigned to a case that has her tracking down a serial killer who’s involved in the occult, Lee will make a discovery more shocking than she could’ve imagined.

Monroe delivers a performance that shows Lee as reserved to a point where you want to peer inside her head to unravel what’s going on.  She brings a strong sense of mystery to her character through her careful, probing gaze as Lee goes about her job and attempts to fathom the frightening implications of what she’s investigating.  Behind her gaze is also a sadness that hints at someone who’s seen things that no person should see.  Just as she tries to sift through the clues, we try to understand her and her way of thinking, resulting in a lead performance that keeps you invested in the nightmare through which Lee has to delve.

Nicolas Cage has an absolute horrific blast in the role of a Satanic worshipper.  We’ve seen Cage go all-in with certain performances where you have to admire how much he’s willing to let loose, and this runs along those lines, but with a terrifying edge.  Right from his brief first appearance, Cage sets the tone for the bone-rattling chills that he’ll give you for the rest of the movie.  You keep wanting to see him again and experience what his performance has to offer, but you also feel like you want to put it off for as long as possible because you don’t want to see what terrible acts his character might commit.  He gives a performance of someone whose brain seems to have been tinkered with by the devil himself, and you’ll be left shaken once the film arrives at the point where it gives you the full dose of his crazed monstrousness.

The screenplay by Perkins brings you through a labyrinth of clues that implores you to pay close attention to what’s going on, making you want to piece everything together even while other stuff is being presented to you.  This is a scenario that pins your eyes to the screen from the very start as you try to catch whatever you can and figure out how it might fit into the bigger picture.  Even if you notice a lot upon your first viewing, Perkins crafts a narrative that will surely warrant a second viewing so you can see what you missed.  This screenplay engages its viewers to try to figure out the mystery every bit as much as it wants you to figure out its lead character, adding layers on both a storytelling front and a dramatic one.  Although pursuing serial killers is something we’ve seen several times in film, don’t let the simplicity of the plot synopsis turn you away because this movie offers much more than I can explain without giving anything away.

The cinematography by Andrés Arochi, who works with Perkins for the first time, gives us camerawork that always has you scanning the frame to either look at a space where someone sinister could appear, or take in the setting to catch as many details as possible that could help you piece the mystery together.  Arochi makes the most of the film’s dark interiors that have you feel the unease of what could be lurking in the shadows, but he also makes effective use of the exteriors. With the story taking place in a rural region of Oregon, Arochi uses his lensing to highlight the disquieting sense of isolation that you can feel outside in such a location, knowing how alone you could be and realizing that danger can come from anywhere.

When talking about the directorial nature of this film, you have to recognize two sets of films.  The first group is the one from the beginning of this review that mentions films that blend crime and horror, and what “Longlegs” does is bring its own distinct and disturbing style, joining the ranks of those chilling stories.  The second group includes Perkins’ other three films, “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” “I’m the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,” and “Gretel and Hansel”; and just like with those movies, “Longlegs” shows Perkins’ skill in loading his films with haunting imagery and a sense of dread that follows you from the start of the film to the end.  Mixing with this dread is the excellent use of quiet in certain scenes, which creates a sense of unease as we brace ourselves for whatever might disturb that quiet.  The mood that Perkins instills is one where it seems like all of the presence of good has left the community, only to be replaced by an evil that’s calculating and merciless.

With “Longlegs,” Perkins has you feel the combined rush of being scared and trying to figure out the puzzle, creating a horror-movie experience to which you’ll want to return right away so that you can feel that rush all over again.

Grade: A

An Aspiring Actress Tries to Survive More Than Just Show Business

Mia Goth in "MaXXXine"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

In 2022, writer-director Ti West gave moviegoers not just the first installment, but also the second installment of his “X” trilogy with “X” and the prequel “Pearl.”  By doing so, he offered two of the best horror films of that year and made leading actress Mia Goth into one of the topmost performers to be working in the genre today.  Since the release of “Pearl,” audiences have been waiting to see how West would cap off his story of amateur actress Maxine Minx (Goth) trying to make it to the big time.

West finally presents his trilogy’s conclusion with “MaXXXine,” a thrilling finale that brings us to not just a new decade, but a new setting as we get pulled into a deadly journey with the titular character.

Maxine Minx is an adult-film actress who wishes to be taken seriously in the movie industry.  When she’s offered the lead in a horror film, Maxine uses this as a chance to prove herself.  However, when a serial killer known as “The Night Stalker’ begins terrorizing the streets of Hollywood, Maxine will have to do what she can to not become the next victim.

Goth provided excellent performances in “X” and “Pearl” that cemented her as one of cinema’s newest queens of horror, and she displays just as much command of the screen in this film.  Goth exhibits a duality of her character’s movie-star-wannabe confidence and a sense of someone who knows that she might be out of her depth.  Maxine has a masterful opening scene where she walks into an audition with a don’t-underestimate-me attitude as she tries to show that she’s more than people give her credit for.  However, this makes her scenes of trepidation on the sets of the horror movie all the more engaging because we see how much she has to lose, wanting to impress her director and knowing she has so few chances to do it.  Maxine knows how to fight for what she wants, but she doesn’t quite know how to fight to keep it once she has it, and that latter factor is fascinating to watch as Goth shows Maxine trying to develop into the person she wants to be.

The film has a terrific supporting cast, but the two standouts are Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Debicki.  Bacon is a lot of fun to watch as a sleazy private investigator who worms his way into Maxine’s life and tries to derail her career.  He eats up the role as someone who won’t stop pursuing his target until his goals are met.  Meanwhile, Debicki is endlessly magnetic as the film director of Maxine’s latest project, an individual who demands perfection and takes Maxine under her wing.  Just like Goth, Debicki shows how her character is aware of how much her potential career is riding on her film production, and it’s fascinating to see her and Goth interact as their characters express the same vivid desire to become Hollywood underdog successes.

The screenplay by West has a bit of a pacing issue in the third act (we seem to simply arrive at the big reveal rather than build towards it), but it’s nevertheless a fun murder mystery that also dives into the controversy surrounding Hollywood in the 1980s when it came to violence and adult content in the media.  West shows it all in great detail as he crafts a narrative that has this Hollywood tension tie into Maxine’s past in intriguing ways as the danger on the show-business streets continues to close in on her, and this assists in adding layers to her character.  Just as West did with Maxine in “X” and the titular character in “Pearl,” he’s adept at letting us get to know the lead character in between the scares, making this a trilogy that’s every bit as much about building a character as it is about the frights.  All of this puts West’s horror-storytelling passion on display as we learn about Maxine both through her journey and through the company that she keeps and avoids.

The cinematography by Eliott Rockett (who lensed several of West’s films, including “X” and “Pearl”), masters the mood of the setting, particularly the lighting of the seedy establishments that the characters populate.  His camera movements capture the griminess of the environments, especially using lighting techniques that emphasize low lighting or red lighting that help us descend into the environment out of which Maxine needs to climb in order to live a better life.

As a director, West not only presents the details of 1980s Hollywood in dedicated detail, but he also crafts the movie to have its bloodier scenes have the look of an ‘80s horror movie.  To do so, he uses practical effects that exemplify a slasher movie gross-out factor that will make you squirm several times as the body count rises and the sense of dread increases with each scene.  Similar to the other two films in his trilogy, we get a full sense of West’s cinematic influences as he mixes them with his ideas to create a terrific blend of scares, period detail, atmosphere, and memorable performances.

For horror fans and general moviegoers, they should feel lucky to have seen West complete his story in his fullest vision.  This series had him leave his mark on modern horror, and with “MaXXXine,” he has the trilogy go out in style.

Grade: A-

The Day That Silenced the World

Joseph Quinn and Lupita Nyong'o in
"A Quiet Place: Day One"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

In writer-director John Krasinski’s 2021 film, “A Quiet Place: Part 2,” the terrific sequel to his original movie from three years before that, he gave one of the film’s best scenes with the opening sequence, a scene that takes place before the events of the first film.  In this scene, Krasinski delivered a pulse-pounding view into the first day of an invasion by aliens who hunt by sound as they descended upon the quiet town of his character’s family.  It couldn’t have been a better beginning to a film that would be on par with the frights of its predecessor.

We now get an even bigger view into the start of the invasion with the prequel, “A Quiet Place: Day One,” from writer-director Michael Sarnoski, in which he delivers a film of surprising emotional depth in between the scares and thrills.

The story follows Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) as she tries to traverse New York City when it descends into chaos following an alien invasion.

Nyong’o provides an endearing performance as a young woman who tries to cling to what’s left of her previous life.  Portraying a hospice patient caught in NYC during a day trip, she has her character muster every remaining bit of energy in her body to survive the apocalypse and return to her childhood neighborhood before her time runs out.  In between the scenes of running for cover, Nyong’o gives us memorable emotional scenes, and whether it be in scenes of no dialogue or with a little, she’s endlessly engaging to watch.  As you watch her go between processing the terror and reminiscing about what her life was like before she got sick, Nyong’o absorbs you in Samira’s arc as she not only as to survive the external threat of the aliens, but the internal threat of her illness, both of which collide to have her confront her mortality.

Nyong’o also has poignant chemistry with costar Joseph Quinn, who plays Eric, a law school student from England.  While they work well together in the sequences that hinge on their fight for survival, there’s a bittersweet scene in the third act that may be one of the best scenes this series has done.  All I’ll say is that it’s a poignant scene that does beautiful work with show-don’t-tell storytelling that allows these characters reveal small things about themselves.  These films show how much a blockbuster horror movie can thrive when you include some doses of human drama, and Nyong’o and Quinn have just as strong of an on-screen connection as the pairings of Krasinski and Blunt in the first film and Blunt and Cillian Murphy in the second.

Although the screenplay by Sarnoski is, in essence, more of the same as the first two films but just on a larger canvas, he makes up for the familiarity by making this the most emotionally impactful of the series.  In between the scenes of alien horror, he offers some wonderful dramatic scenes that really let us get to know Samira and Eric.  While we’ve seen characters in the past stay quiet for fear of being picked off by the aliens, Sarnoski uses this as an opportunity as a way to display who these characters were before the invasions as they try to open up to each other while still trying to remain as quiet as possible.

The cinematography by Pat Scola, who worked with Sarnosksi on his 2021 feature filmmaking debut for the revenge thriller, “Pig,” offers some imagery that goes between tenderness and somberness that allows for touches of the arthouse sensibility that we saw in Sarnoski’s previous film.  And, when it comes to the big set-pieces, Scola grants us imposing views of NYC besieged by otherworldly destruction, taking full advantage of the transition from the rural environments of the first two films to the cityscape offered by this one, capturing a sense of scale that shows the aftermath on a higher level.

As a director, Sarnoski proves that he’s every bit as capable to helm a blockbuster as much as an indie film.  Similar to “Pig,” he strikes a fine balance between effective drama and heart-pounding thrills.  Three movies in, and this series still exhibits that it can maintain its quality and thrive when it allows filmmakers to craft something that’s meaningful.  These movies are partially character-driven, with this film even more so, and Sarnoski is able to make the drama fit in just right with the surrounding sci-fi dread as he expands the overall story of the series.

Potentially, Krasinski’s coming back next year with a third film focused on the original batch of characters.  But, during that wait, it was fun to have an installment that shows someone else’s approach to the material.  With that, Sarnoski makes his voice heard in this quiet place.

Grade: A-