https://blacknerdproblems.com/longlegs-is-not-a-modern-silence-of-the-lambs/

Don’t trust the hype.

I had three different people text me on July 7^th saying WE GOTTA SEE LONGLEGS THIS WEEK! I had read the early reviews, watched the trailers, and as a lifelong Nicolas Cage fan, especially the more recent “I’m a truffle farmer, I invade your dreams, I spoof myself” Nicolas Cage. I was freaking hype!

Even beyond that, I am a fan of director Oz Perkins’ work (please watch The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and his ability to intertwine his historical influences with his own sensory palette of dread, as well as Neon’s consistent investment in indie horror films for the past decade. Add Maika Monroe (please watch It Follows) and Blair Underwood (who has consistently played strong voiced authoritarian figures for the better part of my moviegoing life, put respect on his name), and honestly this felt like a recipe for a box office hit. And it was, doing fantastic numbers and receiving rave reviews, but it was the damn Silence of the Lambs comparisons that made me do a double take.

I wouldn’t be writing this article if so many critics and moviegoers didn’t make LOUD, UNENDING, INCESSENT statements like, “Longlegs is a menacing masterpiece” (Wicked Horror), “stunning, a modern Silence of the Lambs” (Dread Central), or “the best serial killer horror film since the Silence of the Lambs” (Awards Radar). This is the kind of hype that gets in your head, that makes viral marketing campaigns, THAT GETS PEOPLE LIKE ME MAD TIGHT WHEN A MOVIE DOESN’T DELIVER!

Yet, to be fair to the public, Perkins himself stated many times that Longlegs was a homage to Silence of the Lambs. In an interview with Deadline, he said “I was like, ‘I’ll lay [Silence of the Lambs] in.’ And if I lay that in, then I know certain other things, or I can start to make guesses, ‘Oh, it’s a female protagonist. She’s in the FBI. Oh, she’s got a boss. Oh, there’s kind of a wall of evidence. Oh, they’re hunting somebody.’” 

To Perkins’ credit, all these structural pieces exist in Longlegs. Yet, when put side by side with Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs not only doesn’t hold up, but the ways it fails its female protagonist are exposed. You see, I was strapped in for a dangerous and intellectual cat and mouse game between the FBI and two serial killers, but what I got was a one-sided story of a villain with ungodly brilliance and an FBI agent robbed of her smarts, agency, and ability.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, first we gotta recap Silence of the Lambs. First and foremost, the 1991 film established one of the most iconic horror villains of all time with the cannibal Hannibal Lecter, not only because of his sinister and intellectual charm but because of his intriguing narrative set up. Lecter is already imprisoned when Clarice Starling, a strong-willed and smart, albeit wet behind the ears, FBI trainee is told by her boss Jack Crawford to ask him for help in catching the serial killer, Buffalo Bill. (While I won’t get into this here, it’s important to name the horrible transphobia Buffalo Bill’s character contributed to). Throughout the film, Lecter is pulling the strings even from behind bars, leading our various characters on different paths as they collide, all in an effort for him to escape prison by any means necessary. 

Now, it would be easy to only remember Lecter’s role but even though he is a formidable opponent in almost every way, Starling still has some tricks up her sleeve as she proves why she was selected by Crawford to be on this case. Starling clocks that Crawford is using her to bait Lecter from the get go, she profiles Buffalo Bill accurately before ever encountering him, and she solves Lecter’s anagram when he gives false information on Buffalo Bill. Most importantly, in the third act, she reviews her case files, uncovers Buffalo Bill’s true identity, goes door knocking in his hometown, identifies and then kills him using context clues and her FBI training. SHE WAS A DAMN PRODIGY AND STOOD ON BUSINESS! 

Let us never forget that Silence of the Lambs is a magnificent movie not only because of Anthony Hopkin’s delicate balance of Lecter’s ruthless evil and intelligent charm but also because of Jodie Foster’s ability to portray an FBI trainee who is both doggedly eager to impress those around her and trusting of her instincts. The movie is told through her perspective and in this way, the audience is meant to feel both her “fish out of water” energy and eventual graduation from the academy because she earned that ish.

Longlegs initially treads similar ground by introducing us to a strong, smart, freshly trained FBI agent in Monroe’s Lee Harker as she is recruited by her boss, Underwood’s Agent Carter, to hunt Cage’s Longlegs, a serial killer who has been murdering families from afar for almost 30 years. The reason she’s recruited? SHE’S FREAKING PSYCHIC! What is she given to start? Longlegs‘ Zodiac Killer style symbology that no one has been able to decipher for decades. I’m sorry, a psychic FBI agent?!?! Cyphers that need to be decoded in libraries?!?! Good ‘ole detective work?!?! I am READY to go!

And yet, nada. We get a quick montage of Harker “working” the case until she falls asleep, to then be woken up by Agent Carter to tell him she couldn’t crack the cypher, to then go home……where Longlegs stops by for a creepy visit to GIVE HER THE KEY TO DECODING HIS ENTIRE SYMBOLOGY! Hmm, ok strange to give that away for free, but sure moving right along. 

But, no! From there we just get coincidental plot device after goddamn coincidental plot device. Not only does Harker speed decode all 30 years of this symbology, she just gives Agent Carter the damn SparkNotes: “Longlegs references satanism and this farmhouse a lot.” Where is the detective work? Where is reason for me to invest in Harker’s character?? And most blatantly, WHERE ARE THE PSYCHIC POWERS?! 

Harker is the protagonist of this story and yet at every turn, she is robbed of any agency. We come to find out not only did Longlegs meet Harker as a child, he indoctrinated her mother into his devil worshipping schemes and that is why she has psychic powers. The devil and Longlegs have been controlling her life from the very beginning, with the only choice that surprised them being that she joined the FBI. Even in the third act when Harker is supposed to save the day, she enters a room with all the main characters, with the ONLY loaded gun, and decides to……not kill the Satan worshippers until after they’ve done their evil work.  

Don’t get me wrong. The Satanism angle is a strong twist, as Perkins subs the devil in for Lecter as a puppeteering force behind the scenes, and Cage as Longlegs is absolutely terrifying and has the makings of an instant classic horror villain. Yet, these pieces alone don’t make for an engaging enough story. It feels as if Perkins took the most surface level aspects of Silence of the Lambs but didn’t integrate the intellectual cat and mouse game at its heart. While many of us remember the movie for Hannibal Lecter, it’s the engaging yarn that Starling untangles that keeps us coming back. 

Longlegs had an opportunity to showcase a woman FBI agent who, while still new to the job, could do the leg (couldn’t resist) work, a nuanced character who had been unknowingly indoctrinated by the devil but at least showed some kind of common sense and initiative. Yet, everything that happens to and around Harker happens because Longlegs and the devil made it so. At no point does Harker even accomplish anything on her own merits. Her psychic powers are not hers, her decoding of the symbology is not hers, and she consistently fails to save multiple other characters when it matters most. Even the person she does save in the end comes at the cost of Harker having to kill her own mother, an egregious decision that feels unnecessary for a character that has already had so much stolen from her. 

In researching for this article, I learned that the FBI advised during the making of Silence of the Lambs and actually did so because they thought the movie would encourage more women to apply to the FBI. Now, I don’t support the police industrial complex and I don’t want anybody applying to the FBI, but nuanced and engaging representation does matter and Starling’s character had such a huge effect on women in the media that we still feel her reverberations to this day. Underneath the allusions to Silence of the Lambs, Harker is simply a plot device to show just how insidiously powerful the devil is. And when one character has all the power and the other doesn’t, that makes for a pretty lazy script, especially when it consistently comes at the expense of women in horror.  

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The post ‘Longlegs’ is NOT a Modern ‘Silence of the Lambs’: Why Lee Harker is No Clarice Starling appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.