77
Metascore
52 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Total FilmNeil SmithTotal FilmNeil SmithThe horrors, like Cage himself, are largely kept off-screen for much of the movie’s duration. Yet with its eerie soundscape and sepulchral visuals, Longlegs nevertheless succeeds as a deeply disconcerting experience, one that burrows into the brain as insidiously as the innocuous means its villain employs to disseminate his evil.
- 100Time OutPhil de SemlyenTime OutPhil de SemlyenIt’s artfully shot, the aspect ratio tightening claustrophobically as it flashes back to the 1970s. But Perkins’s script also sprinkles in sudden shocks, deeply macabre moments and slashes of dark humour to generate a deep unease all of its own.
- 90Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim GriersonMyriad horror films create a sense of dread, but few manage to evoke the palpable evil that emanates from Longlegs.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyWriter-director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer chiller fully acknowledges a debt to The Silence of the Lambs in its chronicle of a young female rookie agent pulled into the FBI manhunt for a killer wiping out entire families. But the movie is also its own freaky trip, a darkly disturbing experience pulsing with an evil that’s unrelenting in its subcutaneous creepiness.
- 75IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichTerrifying in the abstract even as it grows increasingly absurd to watch, “Longlegs” slinks its way into that liminal space between childhood nightmares and grown-up practicalities with the same precision that it splits the difference between serial killer procedurals and supernatural psychodramas (let’s say “The Silence of the Lambs” and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure”).
- 70IGNKatie RifeIGNKatie RifeThere are moments when Longlegs feels like a movie you’ve seen before, but with an evil filter laid over it: This is both a weakness and a strength, as Perkins’ horror surrealism renders the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.
- 70VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeHow many horror movies can claim to hijack your subconscious? With Longlegs, writer-director Osgood Perkins (“The Blackcoat’s Daughter”) delivers the kind of payoff we sought out as kids, daring ourselves to watch films about boogeymen that made us want to sleep with the lights on.
- 63Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferSlant MagazineMarshall ShafferThis is a sturdily constructed horror film with a foundation sneakily built on shifting sands.
- 50The Film StageMatt CipollaThe Film StageMatt CipollaIt’s not that Longlegs doesn’t make sense of its parts, or that it lacks, as Harker alludes, even a singular revelation. It’s that it seems to think the most basic twist possible counts. Even with its jagged accents, the pieces are just too clean.