Osgood Perkins’ latest horror film “Longlegs” is insidious and unsettling from the beginning to the end. Although you may get a bit impatient with its rather slow narrative pacing and loose storytelling, the movie keeps us on the edge with a creepy sense of dread surrounding its increasingly disturbed heroine, and there is also some extra amusement from another odd performance from one of its main cast members.

After the unnerving prologue scene involved with a young little girl who happens to come across some very weird figure, the movie, which is set in the middle of the 1990s, introduces us to Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a young female FBI agent assigned to a mysterious case not long after her first field experience which turns out to be quite traumatic for her. Although she is still not fully recovered from that shocking happening, her supervisor recruits her anyway because she actually has a sort of psychic ability which may help the investigation of that strange case in question.

As Harker begins to work on the case, we get to know a bit more about its disturbing details. For many years, there have been a series of gruesome family murder incidents, and all of them happen to be linked with an unknown figure named “Longlegs”. While there is no other evidence showing that this figure is actually responsible for these terrible incidents, this figure always leaves a coded letter on the crime scene, and FBI investigators remain quite baffled about who this figure really is – and why and how this figure has done all these killings.

Trying to search for anything to be noticed by her special ability, Harker also often gets quite disturbed by those unnerving details of the incidents associated with Longlegs. In case of the latest incident which happens to be belatedly discovered, she and her supervisor have to face a very unpleasant sight, and some of you may wince a lot even though the movie thankfully does not dwell too long on that.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Longlegs somehow knows that Harker is working on the case. When she is alone in her residence at one night, Longlegs comes and then leaves a letter for her, and that actually leads to a significant breakthrough for the investigation. In addition, Harker eventually discovers the hidden pattern behind the incidents associated with Longlegs, which seems to be involved with some Satanic sacrifice rituals.

As Harker delves deeper into the case, Perkins and his crew members including cinematographer Andrés Arochi Tinajero continue to fill the screen with a lot of moody creepiness. Many of the key scenes feel quiet and static on the surface, but there is always subtle tension beneath the surface, and that is occasionally punctuated by effective moments to jolt us in one way or another.

The story gets more interesting as Harker somehow feels a lot more unnerved about the case than before. While her supervisor is always ready to support her as much as possible, she cannot help but become quite anxious as getting closer to their target, and she also finds herself becoming more distant to her aging mother, who often calls her just for checking out whether she is all right.

Perkins’ screenplay is surely reminiscent of several other serial killer movies such as “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and “Zodiac” (2007), but it goes its own way as taking its time for bringing more creepiness to the story. Even when its villain character is fully revealed at last, the movie does not hurry itself much, and then it allows Nicholas Cage to have some morbid fun with his villain character. While almost unrecognizable under heavy makeup, Cage, who also participated in the production of the movie, is as intense and insidious as demanded, and his deliberately loony performance frequently hovers over the screen even during his absence.

As the emotional center of the film, Maika Monroe, who is no stranger to horror movies considering her breakout turn in David Robert Mitchell’s “It Follows” (2014), anchors the movie well with her solid performance. While ably conveying to us her character’s unstable state of mind, Monroe also brings some human qualities to her character, and she is particularly good during several personal key scenes between Harker and her aging mother.

Most of the supporting performers in the film simply fill their respective spots around Monroe, but a few of them manage to do a bit more than their functional roles require. Alicia Witt, who steadily worked during last 40 years since appearing in David Lynch’s “Dune” (1984), has her own moment later in the film, and Blaire Underwood acquits himself fairly well even though mostly being stuck in his blandly thankless supporting part.

On the whole, “Longlegs” is mostly engaging for the mood and performances, and it will certainly interest you if you like Perkins’ two previous films “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” (2016) and “Gretel & Hansel” (2020). His works are still a bit of acquired taste to me, but I come to have more admiration for his filmmaking skill and talent, and I am already looking forward to watching his next film which will be incidentally released in the next year.