A “psychologically scarring” horror film, dubbed one of the best serial killer movies in recent memory, is now available for streaming.
Longlegs, directed by Oz Perkins (Gretel & Hansel, I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House), follows FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) as she investigates a series of murders attributed to a Satanic killer known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) in the 1990s.
When the film was released it was dubbed “one of the best serial killer films in recent memory” by Matt Neglia, editor of Next Best Picture , who added that the movie was “psychologically scarring” as well as “sinister” and an “unnerving descent into hell that will haunt your mind and soul”.
Some fans were left unable to sleep as audiences hailed the movie as the best in the genre since The Silence of the Lambs.
Those who missed the film in cinemas will now be able to watch it on Prime Video.
Part of the terror associated with Longlegs is Cage’s terrifying transformation, which was kept cryptic in the film’s trailer ahead of its release.
The actor told Entertainment Weekly that this decision was the equivalent to “driving people towards a freak show at a circus tent”.
Of his character, the star added: “The monster is a highly, highly dangerous substance. The way it’s moved, unveiled, deployed has to be treated very carefully.
“Forget about the movie theater blowing up; the whole city could blow up, nay the country, maybe even the world. He is going to change your reality. Your doors of perception are going to open, and your life is not going to be the same.”
However, some felt the movie did not live up to the hype. The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey enjoyed the film and gave it four stars but wrote, “All this noise will, for a chunk of its audience, set up the wrong expectations.
“For my (perhaps already cursed) sensibilities, Longlegs isn’t some unshakeable artefact of malevolence, and more like a knife in the back – nasty, precise, and unexpected.
“From its first frame to its last, it shifts from a morbid chill to a freaky little satanic jaunt. It’s as subtle as a magic trick, and a way for writer-director Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho star Anthony, a useful heritage in this context) to have his cake and eat it, too.”
