At The Movies: Scream queens slay in horror masterpiece Longlegs, slasher sequel MaXXXine

Longlegs (NC16)

101 minutes, opens on July 11
5 stars

The story: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recruit Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) pursues a freaky Satanic killer who could be played only by Nicolas Cage.

The murder sprees have stumped the FBI for decades. In the American thriller Longlegs, set circa 1990s Oregon, fathers across the country are butchering their families in their homes and then taking their own lives. Found at each of the crime scenes is a written cipher signed “Longlegs”.

How is this titular entity (Cage) manipulating the massacres from afar?

Equally mystifying is his personal connection with Lee, who has been assigned to the case because of her psychic capabilities. He knows about her isolated childhood and religious mother (Alicia Witt).

The repressed solitary agent is a latter-day Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) from The Silence Of The Lambs (1991).

Horror is the birthright of American writer-director Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter, 2015), son of Psycho (1960) star Anthony Perkins, and this supernatural procedural mystery – with its cryptograms, bogeyman and creepy doll – is a compendium of genre tropes.

But Osgood Perkins also cites the era’s notorious Zodiac Killer and the Big Bad Wolf, hence mixing fairy tales and occult imagery into his sombre true crime aesthetic to render the familiar discomfitingly unfamiliar. The movie’s quiet power is that of a waking nightmare.

Dread fills every frame and even the fringes beyond, where Longlegs’ presence is felt before he is seen.

And when he does come fully into view amid the misty mid-western greyness, Cage’s character creation is a mad monstrosity let loose from the darkest subconscious, matched by Monroe’s intense performance as the damaged yet steely heroine.

Hot take: The terrifying chiller gets under your skin, deep into your bones.

MaXXXine (R21)

104 minutes, opens exclusively at The Projector on July 11
3 stars

The story: In 1985 Hollywood, adult entertainment starlet Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) finally lands a part in a studio production. But her big break is threatened by her traumatic past and a serial killer.

A hit with critics and horror aficionados alike, the retro splatter-porn X trilogy by American writer-director-producer Ti West tells the story of Maxine’s ascent through the evolution of Hollywood genres.

X (2022) was a 1970 Texan grindhouse picture in which she survived a massacre on a farm, while the 1918 Technicolor melodrama Pearl (2022) was a prequel about her rural childhood.

MaXXXine brings back Brit scream queen Goth as the ruthlessly ambitious heroine in her continuous stride towards mainstream fame: “I’m a star!”

First, though, she must stay alive. The franchise conclusion is a 1980s B-movie slasher where a mysterious black-gloved stalker is carving up sex workers and paralysing Los Angeles, much like the era’s real-life Night Stalker.

The city’s underbelly is a neon-drenched cesspit of strip bars and cheap video stores, backgrounded by the conservative Satanic Panic epidemic.

West uses his prodigious film-making craft, including needle-drops of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and ZZ Top, to recreate the country’s cultural milieu.

This is his strong suit. The thriller has hyper-violence but little tension, even when Kevin Bacon’s skeevy private eye is chasing Maxine down Hollywood Boulevard and right into Psycho’s (1960) Bates Motel on the Universal Studios backlot.

It is a valentine to Tinseltown, a pastiche of Chinatown (1974), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Brian De Palma’s psychosexual pulp and Dario Argento’s Italian gialli caught up in referencing the many more memorable movies.

Hot take: For all that it promises, this satire on show business as a factory of sex and death is mostly just great period vibexxx.