‘Longlegs’: Nicolas Cage’s most terrifying performance
A decade ago, if a movie was announced where Nicolas Cage would be buried under prosthetics, sport a wig of wild unkempt hair, and adopt an unusual high-pitched and almost singsong accent to play a deranged serial killer, most people would immediately assume the film would be crap.
After all, the Academy Award winner and walking meme generator sported plenty of bizarre brogues, dodgy hairdos, and unnecessary affectations during his wilderness years as the most famous face on the on-demand action thriller circuit, but current Cage is an entirely different beast.
Now that he’s finally slummed his way through enough shite to pay off his debts, he’s become an actor reborn. In fact, if he carries on at his current rate, this golden period could end up being the greatest of his career. He’s given more excellent performances in the last five years than he’d done in the previous 15, but nothing he’s ever done has been anywhere near as terrifying as Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs.
He embraced the Lovecraftian insanity of Colour Out of Space, went introspective in Pig, barrelled through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in Prisoners of the Ghostland, planted his tongue into cheek for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, hammed it up in Renfield, and awkwardly charmed in Dream Scenario, but the character of Dale Kobble is something else entirely.
Perkins wisely limits Cage’s screentime, and even though the skin-crawling murderer does get a couple of signature ‘Cage Rage’ moments, it’s never done for the sake of it. The star understands the assignment, and in this case, the assignment is creepy as hell. The body language and the cadence of his voice make Longlegs a fearsome force of nature before he’s even been revealed in full, but the most difficult thing was portraying the antagonist in a way that didn’t simply feel like the novelty value of seeing Cage get weird under a mountain of makeup.
To achieve that, Longlegs operates on the fringes of the story but with a presence that can be felt in every frame, a tactic that wouldn’t have succeeded if it wasn’t for Cage dominating every second of screentime he’s given. To get the most out of the film, the audience has to believe this is a guy who operates almost like a supernatural entity, spurring entire families to murder each other without even having to be in the room.
With Cage in such bravura form, it’s very easy to believe, with his greasy appearance making Longlegs as a person as queasy to look at as his actions and motivations are to understand. It’s literally the stuff of nightmares, with Maika Monroe’s Lee Harker gradually realising there’s a very good reason why she’s the first federal agent capable of cracking the case wide open, with the title character operating as a spine-chilling bogeyman who could reasonably be lurking in the corner of every shadow.
