Watch Maika Monroe meet Nicolas Cage’s serial killer for the first time in Longlegs
In fact, by mid-year – which we are now well beyond – the scariest movie of 2024 could well have been decided and surely the front runner for the award is Neon’s Longlegs, the tale of a woman going after a crazed serial killer.
Maika Monroe plays Lee Harker, an FBI agent whose investigation into Longlegs – played by Nicolas Cage – begins to uncover supernatural ties to the killer and the satanic murders that he commits.
Just like in Bullet Train, not one of the trailers reveals Cage with his full face or body and, because the second version required more surveillance and suspicion and stalking, the Longlegs character would be even more concentrated, creating more tension and mystery, and repeating that motorised swoosh motion even more times. Neon’s behind-the-scenes video of Cage interacting with Monroe reveals that he was not allowed to see Cage either, and that the studio monitors Monroe’s heartbeat. Her resting heart rate is 76 beats per minute, which explodes to 170 bpm as Harker (played by Monroe) walks into a room and sits across from Cage’s character at a table.
‘Then when I turned the corner, and saw that the Longlegs character was played by Nicolas Cage, when I actually saw him, it was a visceral experience I will never forget.
Also starring Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, and Ruth Harker as played by Ruth Harker; Michelle Choi-Lee; Dakota Daulby, and Kiernan Shipka, Longlegs is written and directed by Osgood Perkins, the son of late horror legend Anthony Perkins (he starred as Norman Bates in Psycho, natch), and produced by Cage as well as Dan Kagan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Dave Caplan, and Chris Ferguson.
Critical response to Longlegs so far has been tremendous. In fact, Perkins’s horror holds a 97 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic.
Longlegs opens in theaters on July 12, 2024.
