Summary
2023 was a mammoth year for video games,mathematically the best in two decades, and featured two true heavyweights going for GOTY in the form ofBaldur’s Gate 3andTears of the Kingdom. That’s the most impressive one-two punch since 2020, whenThe Last of Us Part 2beatHades, or 2018 whenGod of WarbeatRed Dead Redemption 2.
What all three of those years have in common is that the game generally thought to be in third place was also very good, but fell short of the generation-defining quality of the gold and silver pair. In 2018 that wasSpider-Man, in 2020 it wasPlayer’s VoicewinnerGhost of Tsushima, and in 2023 it wasAlan Wake 2. The latter of that trio is best in class in terms of uniqueness, creativity, and overall quality, but is also the least popular - and this is my fear for Longlegs.
Longlegs is so Alan Wake 2-coded that my colleague Andrew King wrotea spoiler-heavy comparison of the two. This one is spoiler free.
My Friday night screening of Osgood Perkins’ crime horror was packed. While it was helped by being screened in a smaller theatre, it was the busiest I’ve seen my cinema sinceBarbie. Often, especially for Friday screenings (and more especially for weird horrors), there are less than ten people in there. I’ve gone to some movies where it has literally just been me and my wife. And yet for Longlegs, you could not move for the crowd.
Longlegs Is The Best Kind Of Scary
This was the result of viral marketing - Longlegs is being billed as the scariest movie of the decade. For me, it lives up to that hype. Each scene is taut and lined with dread, every moment claustrophobic and sinister. Bold directorial choices in where the camera lingers, a tight atmosphere, unsettling characters, and a duo of brilliant performances (Maika Monroe underplaying, Nicolas Cage characteristically overplaying) brings the fear like a dark hand clutching sharp around your throat.
Yet a couple of people in my screening left early. Amongst the overheard conversations as we departed, someone said, “I thought this was meant to be scary”. If you asked most people to describe the scariest parts of Alan Wake 2, they’d point to those screams that occasionally disrupt scene transitions, or perhaps when Alan is being chased. But that’s not the right kind of scary. The scariest moments are when the janitor hums a song you think you recognise and you’re all alone in the world.
Scary is a big word, bigger than five letters make it look. It’s bigger than frightening, despite appearances. Scary is not limited to jump scares or monsters or things that go bump in the night. It’s dread. It’s anticipation. It’s knowing something frightening could happen, right when you most suspect it and you feel your heartbeat shivering like kneecaps, or exactly when you don’t. This is the way Longlegs is scary.
That makes me wonder about its momentum. Opening weekend projections were raised from $5 million to $10 million after strong previews (it eventually hit $22 million), but what will those people have to say about it? Personally, I’m telling anyone who likes Alan Wake 2,Immortality, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, The Silence of the Lambs, Memories of Murder, or generally having a bad time while having a good time to go see Longlegs.
Can Longlegs Keep Its Momentum Going?
But will others leave having never jumped in their seat or seen a man with a bloody knife running around screaming, and tell their friends it wasn’t that scary? Not enough happens? It was too weird? Those box office numbers are high, but now they need to last.
It’s a fear created by Alan Wake 2, which is maybe the most ‘game journalist’ video game since Prey. Everyone I speak to says it is magnificent, but everyone you speak to says, “Alan Wake? Yeah I think I heard of that one.” This is not a superiority complex. Clearly, those of you with friend groups tuned into games will know Alan Wake. But despite being revered as one of the most interesting, engaging, and inventive video games of its era, most of the cold hard news we’ve heard about ithas involved sales that have been impressivewithoutrecouping development costs.
I hope Longlegs carries its momentum into strong word of mouth and persistent box office returns, because we need more movies like this. Character-driven horror, not as a metaphor for trauma but as a vehicle to crawl under your skin, is rare these days. It has been since the end of the ‘90s.
If Longlegs succeeds, it’s hard to learn the wrong lessons from it.The lesson from Top Gun: Maverick wasn’t to make films feel real with true stunt work, but to remake ‘80s hits.The lesson from Barbie wasn’t to appeal to the female demographicwith female-centric comedy based on more substantive issues than romcom fodder, butto greenlight movies about toys.
Butyou can’t really get Longlegs wrong. It’s a movie that makes you feel bad all the way through and doesn’t even lift that feeling by the end. Alan Wake 2 is similarly relentless in its supernatural imagery and confusing yet pervasive sense of dread. We need more art that explores the darkness like this.
Alan Wake 2
WHERE TO PLAY
Alan Wake 2 is the sequel to Remedy’s hit survival horror game. It blends two separate stories into one, following FBI agent Saga Anderson as she investigates both a series of brutal murders and a story written by Wake himself.
