Longlegs is often a head-scratcher and surely it will reveal all its spooky cards on second viewing… once you know the madness to come and can spot the clues. Or maybe not. I am, however, scratching my head still.

The flick is about a young FBI agent helping with a decades long serial killer who murders whole families without any evidence of him ever being in the house. The agent appears to be psychic and able to decipher the cryptic runes the killer leaved behind.

This flick has a HUGE X-Files and Silence of the Lambs fixation… and also Alan Wake 2. Very moody Pacific Northwest vibe, dark and dreary. I’m not against it… it made me wish Sam Lake would have come out to do a silly dance (if you know, you know). All hail The Old Gods of Asgard… or maybe Satan. Or The Cigarette-Smoking Man.

Where was I? Oh yeah… Maika Monroe plays the closed off FBI agent and she never met an empty room she didn’t love (hell is other people… and Satan). She might overplay the incommunicado thing since I kept wondering if she was meant to be on the spectrum. Maybe she was. Plus there are some hints dropped in the investigation that made me think, “Oh, like the creepy, closed off girl?” But the film had one over on me.

Wacky Nicholas Cage in wackadoodle mode plays the killer… under so much face-bloating latex that I initially wondered what in hell they were doing (I still wonder that… but at least I got used to it). Plus his Cage Rage thing initially felt wildly out place for the movie’s somber tone. But when he finally gets an extended scream-a-log, he goes from “what’s Cage on about now?” to actually pretty freaky.

I’m not sure the movie is overly scary though there were a couple effective jump scares. What it really is is deeply unnerving. Unsettling. The dark mood and off-putting imagery would occasionally crawl under my skin and make camp. And bloody gunshots… effective.

Longlegs as a complete film can occasionally be a little slow and thoughtful in its somber mood-setting. But I think it pulls off enough freaky moments, spooky atmosphere, with interesting characters to work. It’s an effective spooktacular FBI investigation freakout Cage fest with an FBI agent I’d like to see in a sequel.

Score: 86