Longlegs

Longlegs achieves the creepy and the macabre benchmark but "make it make sense."  At the end of this film, it took great mental prowess to go back over the facts to come to a theorized conclusion.  One should not have to fight so hard to enjoy a movie.

Where to start?  To start from the beginning would not do anyone any justice. Sometimes, like going to a pool on a hot, humid summer afternoon and the water is bone-chilling cold, there is a temptation to stick a toe in the water to adjust the body temperature. To overcome the cowardly allurement, dive right in and "take it on the chin."  Let the shock of the frigid water (feeling like knives stabbing into your skin) be absorbed by your system.  This would be the characterization of my interestingly bizarre cinematic fracas of Longlegs.

Longlegs, starring Maika Moore, Nicolas Cage, and Blair Underwood, is about an FBI agent pursuing a serial killer who gets her involved with the occult. A series of clues leads her into the freakish and troubled mind of a satanic doll maker and a tangled web of grotesque killings that dates to her life as a child. 

Some movies leave more questions unanswered than answered; for example, Heredity, Mother!, and Midsommar.  When the film is over, viewers must decipher what was watched, movies of interpretations.    These films can create endless debates, stir controversy, and somehow metamorphose into cult classics.  Like the series finale of The Sopranos, it entices audience participation, theories, and conspiracies that people still talk about today.  Longlegs is not The Sopranos, but it will have audiences theorizing its meaning and ending for some time.

The movie's highlight is Nicolas Cage, who is unrecognizable as Longlegs.  We often forget the talents of Cage, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1996 for his portrayal of a Hollywood screenwriter struggling with alcoholism in Leaving Las Vegas.  Cage has mentioned that acting is almost like mixed martial arts.  He stated that it can be whatever someone wants it to be.  When combined, they can create their Jeet Kune Do with acting.  With this role, he transformed into a disturbing dollmaker who preys on the souls of many, resulting in gruesome acts of death.

It is good to be challenged in thought.  It causes attention to detail and forces one to look at the whole picture, seeing a situation objectively.  It denies the assumption that thoughts are facts.  This is a good thing, especially when it comes to carefully thought-out thrillers where viewers submit to the challenges of their thoughts and let the facts of the film tell the story instead of deriving their own conclusions before the movie ends.  Longlegs achieves the creepy and the macabre benchmark but "make it make sense."  At the end of this film, it took great mental prowess to go back over the facts to come to a theorized conclusion.  One should not have to fight so hard to enjoy a movie.