Longlegs Movie Explained (SPOILERS)

I think high expectations killed a lot of the enjoyment for people. I went in completely blind, didn’t even know Cage was in this; left absolutely wowed!

As someone who is a horror film fanatic and has seen this a number of times, I find it hard to understand why you people are writing this film off as not scary or boring?! Maybe in order for a horror film to be scary these days they need cheap jump-scares. I remember seeing Hereditary at the cinema and was baffled by others there calling it boring. Yet I think Longlegs and Hereditary are two shining examples of movies done right!

Another thing, the families welcomed the nun in the home. If they never welcomed the nun in, the devil wouldn’t be able to do anything. Deceit, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Just literally got out of the theater from seeing it. I loved it but man this was probably one of the most bizarre horror movies I've ever seen.

Just left the theater. Movie freaked me out like I haven't been in a while. Truly disturbing

Thought the movie was great. I don’t understand the fiery opposition (other than the fact it wasn’t another Blumhouse jump scare fest.) I thought the pacing and the main conflict were great. The overarching themes feeling to me like generational trauma and the concepts of destiny. Nicholas Cage was a freak show in a great way.

I feel like this review fails to explain so much of the film... Like why did he choose that name? Does he always visit the child first? How long has he been doing this? Why did it start? If the person has to let in the one to do it, then how come he just broke into the MCs house? How was he able to sneek in to places, considering he could bearly move? If he never went in himself, then who put the letters? How did the mom not leave any hair, fingerprint or evidence left? So many questions...

i swear long legs looks like Jennifer Coolidge

What I don't understand is why Longlegs went after the harter family. He always went for families of 3: Father, mother and daughter. But Lee lived alone with her mom and Longlegs would've known that because he was already watching them.

If they didn’t explain the entire plot at the end I would’ve enjoyed this more. It was like a YouTube video just started playing explaining the movie I just watched.

I feel like all those deep video essays are written by chatgpt. The guy says square is a symbol of completeness, contradicting all the Greek and European thought, which always prescribed completeness to circle

I genuinely feel like the marketing campaign was more tense than the movie itself, I wasn't dissapointed but it was a bit underwhelming :///

I want to commend the marketing team for Longlegs for putting lipstick on this pig and suckering me into dropping my cash to actually go to a theater to see a film. Shame on me. The opening hook was great with the aspect ratio set to a home movie from the 70's.  Creepy and I had such high hopes.  That was about as good as I got for me.  Issues you might ask?  Let's delve into them. First, our protagonist Lee Harker is introduced to us as a person who has a unique psychic power (after the hook showing her as a little girl).  They develop this by allowing her to find a serial killer in a neighborhood of cookie cutter suburban homes. Fine.  The door opens and the FBI agent gets shot immediately (nice jump scare with the theater sound) and she enters what is a very creepy situation with plastic all over the walls.  Of course, no call for backup and no one knows where they are (this will be a constant theme throughout the film). She enters the house (all 110 pounds of her) and the serial killer who just SHOT her partner is just sitting on a bed waiting to be arrested by her.  What the hell was that?   He kills an agent upon first sight at the door and then basically gives up without a fight.  They don't show her arresting him beyond "don't move" because the entire situation is absolutely ludicrous.  This big serial killer with a gun who just shot an FBI agent is going to just allow himself to be handcuffed and put away for life? So begins the many plot holes in this film. Then, she gets promoted on her ability to predict numbers right (she says she is 50% psychic) and off we go. That psychic power allows her to figure out how to decipher the code for Longleg's mysterious letters going back 20 years.  Okay, no problem with that (despite the fact that a knock on her door late at night prompted her to go walking through the woods and leave her front door open, thus allowing the killer to drop a letter off on her desk - no one would do that). She used a little of Dante’s “circles of hell” and combined that with her psychic powers and knowledge of the Book of Revelation to crack the code. She figured out the ciphers and I got interested again, but what did the code reveal to all of us?  Nothing.  The dude has 20 years of letters and we learn absolutely nothing from any of them. Her boss barely even cares.  So, at that point I was like the Zodiac connection is done and Fincher's film is far superior in every way, but I shall continue because this film STEALS ideas from a bunch of other superior films and then pretends to be unique. Oh, the psychic powers don't matter anymore by the way.  They are useless.  She's pretty much a detective from that point forward and all the character development we have witnessed is irrelevant.  I also find the scene where she brings her drunk FBI boss home very late at night comical.  He invites her in (no one would do that as it is nearly midnight) and then she ends up sitting in the daughter's room (WTF), not talking, and the daughter is so smitten with this female agent who clearly is socially awkward that she invites her to her birthday party.  I also turned to my wife and told her how the film would end at that point, especially when the daughter references a "head missing" from one of her trophies on her desk. I knew we would be right back in that house and someone was getting a head cut off.  It was foreshadowing, but the entire premise was stupid.  I guarantee if you were a little girl and some weird agent came into your room around midnight that you did not know, you would hardly invite her to your birthday party, especially if she DID NOT TALK and she looked at the wall away from you the entire time.  You would probably run to your parents' room screaming with fear.  Moving on. There are a few things we don't really understand and they are never explained to us: Why is her mom a hoarder? Why did she never question a wall with like 50 keys on it and door locked in her own home (this had to have started when she was 9, right?)? Why is the killer called Longlegs? Where did that nickname come from? What is the ritual or background of the steel balls in the doll's head? What prompted him to start killing families? Who is the world called the FBI and allowed them to capture Longlegs in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road? The evil plan itself makes little sense. The weird nun arriving at your house with a ridiculous box saying you have "won a prize" from the church and “Can I come in?” is the most lame plan to sneak into people's homes I have ever heard.  Sorry.  If a nun shows up on my porch with a 4 foot box, I am telling her 'God bless... Go away" instead of inviting her in, especially because Harker's mother is so damn bizarre anyway.  We get creepy scenes of Nicolas Cage building dolls that look exactly like the killer in Silence of the Lambs (better movie).  Cage was most definitely unhinged and if it were not for him, no one would even go see this movie. Back to stealing movie scenes... So we get the whole "the killer wants to be caught" moment just like Se7en, Skyfall, and The Dark Knight (oh, and the VHS pause of Longlegs singing “Happy Birthday” in the most creepy moment so he can remain on the screen behind them while talking is right out of The Dark Knight).  Our agent then goes, by herself, without telling anyone, to an unguarded and unwatched room with the biggest killer they have been seeking for 20 years in there, and we get our one on one moment.  Who the hell believes that no one would be at the door, no one would be watching him 24-7, and that this agent would just walk in there?  But, I digress.  They have the conversation that we all have seen before in Se7en, The Dark Knight, The Little Things, and many others. The cop/agent and the serial killer across the table from each other. The killer “knows things” about the agent and so forth. Then Longlegs says, "Hail Satan" and bashes his head in.  Well, let's explore the prior scene a bit.  He was caught by standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with two suitcases.  I was intrigued here with "What is in those two suitcases he packed?  A critical clue?  Something that will change the course of the film?" - NOPE.  They comment that he had "Satanic sh—t" in there.  Wow, what kind of lazy plot development is that? So, he kills himself but says he will be everywhere  after doing it (kind of Star Wars moment - strike me down Darth and I will be more powerful than you can imagine).   So, Harker realizes her mother is involved.  The other female agent goes with her to investigate.  What about her boss?  The guy who decided to go to the farmhouse two hours away in the middle of the night because it was a new clue?  No.  He does not go out there to investigate.  Why?  He has to stay home and kill his family at the end.  Oh, and this whole God vs Satan and let's destroy families and children in a war against God idea comes straight from... Prisoners.  Another vastly superior movie. Let's cut to the chase.  The lady agent gets killed.  Once again our protagonist does not call anyone for backup, help, or to let them know a single thing.  This has been the MO the entire film.  She wakes up in the house and then realizes that her mother is headed to her boss' house.  Does she call anyone?  NO.  Does she call her boss to warn him?  NO.  She drives in the killer's car  (stored at her mom's house) as fast as she can and then screams (trying to create a parallel scene with Longleg's earlier) and arrives at the house. When she shows up, does she call anyone at that point (knowing there will be bloodshed)?  Hell no.  Let's just sit here while people are hypnotized by a doll (we still don't know the background of how those dolls came to be or even how that steel ball thing works or is created - a ritual?  WTF - nothing).  Thus ends the film with supposedly a shocking moment as Nic Cage appears smiling with another "Hail Satan" moment tossed in, after he is dead already.  So, aren't we clever?  The cinematography was great.  The sound was great.  But I did not buy any of it. I wanted to like this film too. It’s rare to be bored and at the same time rolling one’s eyes during a horror film, but this one achieved that level for me.

No way you gave us the definition of symbolism

So what is the point of the Devil? What is the point of the killings and the use of dolls as stand-ins?? Seems like more style than substance.

Even the rolling credits scroll backwards.

Just got out of the theatre. The film confused me… as a literature major, I’m not sure how much of that is due to GOOD writing (works that is intentionally misleading, abstract, and vague) and how much is due to BAD writing (plot holes, hypocritical events, and so on). If someone could help clear up a few questions, I’d love to hear your thoughts! 1. Why would Satan want Longlegs to be caught? If the force of Satan was working through our main character, then why would it actively choose to show her enough to lead to the capture of Longlegs and to the end of his cult of killings? At some points in the film, yes, Satan’s essence blinds her from truth. But at other points, it seems to bring her closer to discovering it. It’s a bit vague (perhaps intentionally so), but it seems a bit contradictory. 2. Why would (or HOW could) the mom shoot the doll of the main character? We see that the mom, who is very clearly under the influence of Satan, kill an FBI agent then shoot the doll of her daughter, freeing her from Satan. Later, however, when our main character tries to do this to another doll at the movie’s end, Satan seems to prevent her from doing so… So… why? Why does Satan allow our protagonist’s doll to be shot and her spirit freed, but not the other young girl’s? If the mother, who was clearly being controlled by Satan, could shoot it, why couldn’t the protagonist? As I write these questions down, I think I see my main issue with the film. When it comes to vague and softly defined magic systems in writing, such as the spiritual or occult arts, it’s hard to have any sort of reason behind why some things work and other things don’t. It just… does. Or doesn’t. To me, that sort of writing hurts a film, as if the film is shrugging its shoulder and saying, “This happens just because.” It’s not convincing to me given the worldbuilding we’re shown. Are the characters fighting internally against the devil? Is there some form of spiritual warfare against the devil at play? Who knows? It’s just… vague. And it tends to take me out of the experience.

This was perhaps the scariest horror movie I've ever seen, and that's coming from a person who found "The Ring" more silly than scary. The success of the horror lay in the slow revelation of the reasons the main character seemed so afraid of everything around her. It also lay in her complete lack of relief from her fears (and thus the complete lack of relief for us, the audience). I know little about the mythology surrounding Satan or the occult, so I missed the references the analyst described in the video. I think some sort of commentary about the U.S.'s place in the world was going on, too. A few specific things to point to in that regard: 1.) The audience is constantly being treated to a large, framed picture of Bill Clinton in the FBI office. Of course, it's the FBI office, and it's meant to remind us that most of the story is set in the 1990s. But that picture shows up so many times that Bill Clinton's face becomes creepy. 2.) There's a very specific focus on white houses as scenes of crime. 3.) At the climactic birthday party of Carter's daughter, we hear the very obscure song from 1966, "The Happy Song," sung by Glenn Close (yes! that Glenn Close!) from her time with the singing and dancing patriotism cult "Up With People." This group sent young people all over the world to promote a cheery version of American patriotism (and performed in Superbowl halftime shows up into the early 1990s). 4.) And most of all, there's the idea of killing other people's children to keep your own children safe. How can anyone who grew up during the "War on Terror" not think of the drone strikes in South Waziristan and such? Overall, I think this film is a bit like one by David Lynch. It's not really meant to have a single, discernible meaning. It's meant, instead, to conjure up all sorts of thoughts, not all of which can be analyzed clearly in a single whole.

for a second I was super mad at people who left the room in the middle of the movie .....but then i realized that they dont deserve to watch or be able to like such a good film

I thought this movie would be a lot more interesting if he was a hypnotist or something and not just an evil wizard