Why grisly serial-killer horror Longlegs is this summer’s great ‘anti-blockbuster’

Starring Nicolas Cage as a satanist mass assassin, Longlegs has been referred to as “the scariest movie of the last decade”. Here is why, regardless of its snowy setting, it is excellent summer time programming.

I am relieved to report that I did not have nightmares after I watched Longlegs, however I might see why it may be this 12 months’s most talked-about “elevated horror” movie, ie a horror movie that does not depend on bounce scares, however on a pervasive air of dread and disorientation. Its solid and crew are a key issue. The movie’s writer-director is a horror-fan favorite, and he additionally occurs to be the son of the star of Psycho, Anthony Perkins. Its star, Maika Monroe, has been related to high-quality spookiness ever since she appeared in two 2014 movies, It Follows and The Visitor. And her co-star, Nicolas Cage, is rarely happier than when he’s being the weirdest actor in US cinema.

Monroe stars as Lee Harker, an earnest, anti-social FBI agent whose profession is getting underway within the Nineties – sure, Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in Silence Of The Lambs is clearly an affect. Her hunches are so dependable that she might have psychic powers – and within the uncanny netherworld of Longlegs, psychic powers are usually not unheard-of – so she is seconded to research a satanist (Cage) who has slaughtered 10 households over a 30-year interval. Cryptic notes have been discovered on the scene of each crime, however it all the time appeared as if the daddy / husband of every household had murdered his spouse and kids, after which killed himself. The one rational clarification is that the satanist one way or the other persuaded different males to do his killing for him. Or, as Harper’s boss (Blair Underwood) places it, “He murders them, however not in particular person.”

If that weren’t sinister sufficient, the entire lightbulbs within the movie appear to have the bottom potential wattage, and its color palette is dominated by shades of brown – sure, Seven is one other large affect. And Cage, preening and cackling whereas caked in white make-up, exhibits us what he would have executed if he’d been solid as the Joker in The Darkish Knight. Longlegs can also be so snowy and wintry that it will probably’t be lengthy earlier than followers are arguing on social media over whether or not it counts as a Christmas movie.

All of this raises the query of why it’s being launched in the midst of summer time. Why is a skin-crawling serial-killer thriller being requested to compete with the crowd-pleasing, megabudget likes of Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine? The reply is that it is a crafty instance of counterprogramming – that’s, the observe of releasing a movie across the similar time as one other, higher-profile movie of a starkly totally different style. The thought is that plenty of folks will go to the cinema over the vacations, however not less than a few of these folks will fancy a substitute for whichever blockbuster is hogging many of the screens of their native multiplex.

What has typically occurred historically is {that a} deafeningly noisy motion epic has been touted as the largest movie of the summer time, so distributors have sneaked out a smaller-scale romantic comedy for anybody craving some mild aid. When Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace got here out in Might 1999, many cinemagoers have been completely satisfied to pop to Notting Hill as an alternative. When The Darkish Knight shrouded Batman in doom and gloom in July 2008, the sunny escapism of Mamma Mia! made a refreshing change. Armageddon and Saving Personal Ryan have been each launched in July 1998, so it is no marvel that audiences needed to regular their nerves with There’s One thing About Mary.

This form of counterprogramming light over the previous decade, as Hollywood largely gave up on rom-coms, however final 12 months it got here again with a bang. Just a few months after Common introduced that Oppenheimer could be launched on 21 July, Warner Bros introduced that they have been releasing Barbie on the identical day. It virtually felt like a parody of counterprogramming: a furrow-browed Christopher Nolan drama concerning the atomic bomb versus a brilliant pink Greta Gerwig comedy a few trend doll. However the absurd distinction between the 2 movies turned out to be so irresistible that hundreds of thousands of us opted to see them each. 2023 turned the 12 months of Barbenheimer.

This summer time, counterprogramming has been reworked once more. Hollywood romantic comedies resembling A Household Affair and The Concept of You’ve gotten been consigned to streaming companies, and there are comparatively few main blockbusters on the schedule – only one Marvel movie, nothing from DC, no new instalment of Star Wars, Jurassic Park or Mission: Unimaginable. That has left the way in which clear for a distinct number of low-budget alternate options. Reasonably than mild and feelgood movies, we’re getting darkish and feelbad movies, each scarier and grislier than the final. We have already had Kill (bone-snapping violence aboard an Indian prepare) and MaXXXine (bloody mayhem in Eighties Los Angeles), and earlier than the summer time is out, we will see Lure (serial killer at a pop live performance), Blink Twice (ladies trapped on a non-public island), Converse No Evil (murderous couple preying on holiday-makers) – and, in fact, Longlegs.

In impact, these movies are anti-blockbusters. They don’t seem to be bursting with explosions and CGI, and so they haven’t got sweeping orchestral scores and costly advert campaigns, however they do provide the kind of popcorn-dropping pleasure that’s greatest skilled in a cinema surrounded by different folks. In the event that they’re profitable sufficient, horror motion pictures might develop into the brand new summer time blockbusters, whereas superhero motion pictures develop into the counterprogramming alternate options.

Longlegs is launched in US and UK cinemas on 12 July.