LONGLEGS is a new horror movie from writer/director Osgood Perkins (THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER, I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE, GRETEL & HANSEL, also played Young Norman Bates in PSYCHO II because he’s Anthony Perkins’ son). If you saw his other movies, or the bizarre, creepy-as-fuck trailers, you probly got the hint that it’s not a normal commercial horror movie, but more in the slow-horror/arthouse/early-Ti-West/stereotype-of-what-A24-releases tradition. Nevertheless it had the best opening weekend ever for distributor Neon, it’s Cage’s first live action film to open above $20 million since GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE twelve years ago, it’s already made a profit and become the highest grossing original horror movie this year.
Set sometime during the Clinton administration, it stars Maika Monroe (THE BLING RING, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE, WATCHER) as rookie FBI agent Lee Harker (hmm…) who has such uncanny intuition in the field that they test her for psychic powers and assign her to a decades old case. Families with no connection other than their daughters having the same birthday fall victim to murder-suicides, and on the scene are found coded letters signed “LONGLEGS.” Working closely with supportively pushy, hard drinking superior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood, POSSE, SET IT OFF), Harker quickly cracks the cypher, decodes some of the riddles, finds patterns in the dates of the crimes, and comes up with new insights into the case. But somehow Longlegs seems to already know who she is. (read the rest of this shit…)
WATCHER – not to be confused with the Netflix show The Watcher or the Keanu Reeves movie THE WATCHER or the early UPN anthology series hosted by Sir Mix-a-Lot The Watcher – is an excellent psychological horror/suspense thriller that’s a Shudder exclusive and also came out on blu-ray and DVD a few weeks ago. Maika Monroe (
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IT FOLLOWS seems to be the horror hit of the season, rightfully praised for its clever premise, excellent cast and effective indie drama type naturalism. As usual I don’t think it’s as bone-chillingly spookerific or as powerfully groundbreaking as the “I don’t normally like horror movies but this is the greatest horror movie of all time” crowd, but that’s okay. They picked a pretty good one to flip out over. And maybe my respect for it will go up if somebody can convince me that it’s as about something as it seems like it might be.
First I gotta give you that dreaded warning that more than the usual amount of fun in this one comes from not knowing what type of movie it’s gonna be. Not like it’s some crazy rollercoaster or mindblowing, rug-pulling shocker of a twist or anything, but it mixes up genres a little bit and I’m glad I didn’t know where it was going. So you might want to do what I did and just know it’s from the director and writer of 
