The 2024 horror film “Longlegs,” has been meticulously crafted, bit by bit, to unnerve and shake the audience to their core.  It seems it was Director Osgood Perkins' desire to make the audience look at every little dark corner, or recess a little more skeptically for days afterward. In that regard it is extremely effective, for in recent memory there hasn’t been a horror movie as captivatingly unnerving as “Longlegs.” 

Director, Osgood Perkins masterfully manipulates the camera and composes the shots so every frame has a ring of shadow surrounding it. It has the effect of creating, in every shot, a near-suffocating atmosphere that compels the eyes to scan the periphery of the screen for whatever unseen horror might lurk there. 

Perkins accomplishes one of the most praiseworthy things a horror filmmaker can attain; he makes the movie feel like a waking nightmare. Instead of simply watching the film you feel like it’s being hurled at you, like it’s sitting right in front of you, and there isn’t a thing you can do to repel it. 

The performances, though do deserve some credit with Nicolas Cage’s titular serial killer stealing the show in every scene he’s in. Though often forgotten about, Maika Monroe and Alicia Witt provide perfectly serviceable - if not a bit to type - performances as the lead character Agent Harker and her estranged mother. 

When the weight of the atmosphere lifts, which happens once or twice in the film, and the audience has time to catch their breaths; cracks rapidly start to form in the narrative. For how much of a triumph the movie is, in regards to its atmosphere, it is still plagued by the reality of being, essentially, a by-the-numbers horror film with the same tropes and flaws and structure as the rest of the genre. In that sense it is utterly unremarkable. 

Perkins seemingly remembers that the film needs a conclusion, and thus, barrels to it at breakneck pace, leaving the audience and atmosphere in the dust. The inner workings have been laid bare, and the audience watches as the film pauses to explain the entire mystery in extensive detail before concluding what should have been a modern horror classic with a rather unremarkable, trite ambiguous ending.