Longlegs

Seen at a distance, Longlegs plays less like an occult mystery than like a story about damage management – about what happens when a family chooses concealment over truth and builds an entire life around that decision. I watched it at the Bayers Lake theatre in Halifax, on a date. The seats were close, the room unusually quiet, and the movie’s low-volume intensity made ordinary human sounds feel intrusive. That atmosphere suits a film where nothing announces itself loudly and almost everything important is delayed.

The plot presents itself as an FBI procedural set in the 1990s. Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe, is assigned to a series of murder–suicides in Oregon: fathers killing their families near their daughters’ ninth birthdays, leaving behind letters signed “Longlegs” in handwriting that matches no one in the house. The case suggests an external threat – a serial killer, possibly occult – but the film steadily redirects attention inward. Patterns emerge: the birthdays, the dates forming shapes on calendars, the dolls delivered to the homes. None of these function as clues in the conventional sense. They don’t lead forward so much as point backward.

Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs is often framed as the villain, but in practice he operates more like a facilitator. He doesn’t personally commit the murders. He sets conditions, delivers devices, and relies on others – particularly parents – to complete the process. His arrest and suicide don’t resolve anything because he was never the center of the system. He was a component.

The film’s real focus is Lee’s mother, Ruth. Her “protection” of her daughter turns out to be the organizing principle behind the entire case. Years earlier, when Longlegs threatened young Lee, Ruth agreed to cooperate to keep her child alive. From that point on, she helped distribute the dolls that triggered the murders, while also suppressing Lee’s memories so she could grow up functional, unaware, and safe. The film treats this not as madness but as a terrible, sustained choice: truth was postponed in favor of survival.

That choice has consequences. Lee’s intuition, her emotional distance, and her inability to fully understand her own past are all side effects of having reality edited for her. When the truth finally surfaces, it doesn’t arrive as revelation so much as inevitability. The final attempt to stop the cycle succeeds only partially. Another child is saved, but the mechanism itself remains intact. The doll cannot be destroyed. The damage is contained, not erased.

What Longlegs ultimately depicts is horror that originates inside the family rather than outside it. The threat isn’t invasion but inheritance. Violence is passed along through care, obedience, and secrecy. By the time the credits rolled and we stood to leave, the story felt complete but unresolved, which seems intentional. Outside, the parking lot lights were on, the city moving as usual. The date leaned toward me, something ordinary continuing uninterrupted. The film doesn’t deny the possibility of normal life – it just insists on the cost at which it’s sometimes maintained.