Longlegs Review

Spoilers ahead, obviously

I like horror movies, so my friend recommended me to go watch Longlegs. As much as I hate to say it, I just don’t think it’s a good movie. I know nobody is going to care, but I need to get this off my chest. The reviews seem pretty divided, with a minority who think it’s disappointing and most thinking it’s amazing.

To make matters worse, I think whether you like the movie or not, comes down to whether you’re actually smart enough to appreciate a good story or not. That’s a very unkind thing to say, but I can’t help but think the people who like this movie, just aren’t very smart. I really think that’s what it comes down to.

Why? Because it has all the surface level ingredients of horror, but then it never manages to stitch them together into an organic coherent whole. And that either annoys the hell out of you, or you are just passively entertained by having all the various disturbing elements thrown at you.

This is where I start spoiling the movie. In 101 minutes, we have the following elements thrown at us:

-A series of families where the father kills the whole family

-A serial killer with occult powers who directs them to kill their family

-A random link to the book of Revelation

-The serial killer makes creepy paranormal dolls

-The lead investigator of the case has paranormal abilities

-The mother of the lead investigator on the case turns out to be involved

-The serial killer forces the mother to deliver the paranormal dolls to people’s houses

-The serial killer is a satanist

-The serial killer talks like some kind of mental patient with a childhood trauma

-The only evidence left behind are coded letters, signed “longlegs”

-All the murders are performed on dates that create a triangle (contributes nothing to the story)

I know this movie will do well in the box office, it does well in the reviews. But when you really look at it from a detached perspective, it’s just a bad movie, because it keeps throwing more and more disturbing elements into it, without every really justifying any of them, or properly fleshing any of them out.

Why is this mother so afraid of this guy? Why does she do his bidding, instead of going to the cops?

Why is the guy a satanist? Why does he talk like a traumatized kid?

Why does he make dolls? Why does he have occult powers? Why does he leave letters behind?

Even the most obvious question, why the guy calls himself longlegs, IS NEVER ANSWERED.

People act like this is the new Silence of the Lambs, but it will be clear that it just has no staying power, because it’s not a coherent whole.

And you might say “well, a horror movie doesn’t have to explain everything”. And I agree. If you’re going for something intentionally a little ridiculous and over the top, fine, you can just have people run into a dead crusader deep down in the Paris catacombs (As Above So Below), or take out a demonic woman on a date who starts ripping flesh out of the men she fucks (The V/H/S series). You don’t have to justify everything.

But in a thriller of 101 minutes, where you follow an FBI investigator looking at a serial killer, you’re going to want more justification of what’s going on. I don’t get it, because the guy who wrote the movie, Oz Perkins, also did The Blackcoat’s Daughter, which I did like. It was a little confusing too, but it did not try to be everything.

At the end of the day, it just illustrates to me again that leftists are smarter than right wingers, especially when it comes to art. At the Guardian, the review points out exactly what I explain here. It throws so many elements into the mix, without ever properly justifying them, that the whole thing starts to feel silly. It feels very Hollywood.

If you want a good horror movie, I would say you should watch Hereditary. Why is it good? Because it is just immensely cruel. You can just feel the pain of the characters, you can just imagine the kind of terrible misery they’re gradually sucked into that they can’t escape from. If you want to see supernatural elements done in a convincing way, you should watch The Witch. And if you want a really nostalgic horror movie, I would say watch Summer of 84. Those are excellent movies, but this is just a mess.

11 Comments

  1. I like the horror movie genre also, but I haven’t seen any of the movies you mentioned, none of them, because I no longer have the patience for all that ACTING.
    I know it’s difficult to pull off a good horror movie. Everybody in this thread is going to name their favorites so I might as well start off. I LOVE the first ‘Phantasm’ and John Carpenter did good work, with his own music!

    • > I LOVE the first ‘Phantasm’ and John Carpenter did good work, with his own music!

      A man after my own heart! That’s a cherished favorite of mine as well. It just has a special…something…that was only available in the early 80s. Maybe one had to be there at the time, as a young teenager.

  2. I had a friend who was totally fascinated from the movie “Faces of Death”, he couldn’t get enough of this kind of movie. Later I found out, that he has really dark desires, and I distanced me from him.

    I tried to talk with him about his fasciniation and asked him if he at least see it critical, but he completely blocked me with the attitude, that he is like is and have a right to be like he is.

    From my worldview, in which any human have multiple personalities, I must understand this. One of his sub-personalities, who got ill because of mistreatment in childhood, just defends its right to exist. And his other sub-personalities can’t help him, because his internal “teamwork” is totally disturbed.

    I guess you have the same problem.

    Btw: It’s not intelligent to always harp on about intelligence issues. You only show weakness with this.

    • > Btw: It’s not intelligent to always harp on about intelligence issues. You only show weakness with this.

      Hmmmmmmmm

      ????

  3. I’ll give Hereditary and even Longlegs a try. Nowadays I can enjoy horror stuff, like the Asylum season of American Horror Story, but my deepest fascination is about horror movies I watched when I was younger.
    Those I can watch over and over and have a dual past & present experience that doesn’t happen when I’m watching new material as an adult.
    When I was a kid I watched The Burning Moon which made me lose my mind badly for a long time, that’s the only reason it’s my favorite.

  4. I think that there is some indefinable way in that watching horror movies is damaging for the soul. And also that it goes the other way as well: soul-damaged people are drawn to horror (and gore, for those 4chan addicted among us.)

    I gots no data on this, it’s as much a hunch and a belief as a fact based opinion. But I’ve been in this world a lot longer than most of you guys and I’ve come to trust these hunches.

    FWIW.

  5. I haven’t seen “Longlegs” yet, but from your review of it and the questions you pose of it, I get the sense that this is one of those things where your autism “superpower” fails you.

    I was once friends with a supersmart Jew who was somewhat autistic and your list of questions about the plot remind me of the sorts of questions he would ask about things. SuperSmart, but just not really gelling with irrational human emotion and motivation.

    > If you want a good horror movie, I would say you should watch Hereditary.

    I would advise against it. One of the more disturbing films I’ve seen in recent memory. It is truly well-made from a technical perspective, and the lead actress’s performance is Oscar-worthy, but it was so grim and depressing that I almost wish I never saw it. You may hear from time to time of people who as youngsters watched gore videos on LiveLeak of people being decapitated and whatnot, who say they wish they never watched that stuff because it polluted their minds and souls. I kind of feel the same about Hereditary. For the strongest stomachs, only.

    It should go without saying that both “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” were written and directed by Ari Aster — a Jew.

  6. If your horror steez is things like “The Burning Moon” I would think twice before watching Hereditary. Just IMHO

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