With Longlegs, Maika Monroe Proves She’s the Queen of Fashionable Horror

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One upside to the so-called “elevation” of horror films over the previous decade or so has been the revelation that performers could make full and well-rounded careers out of scream queen (or king) gigs. That’s not a knock on the actresses like Barbara Crampton or Adrienne Barbeau, who labored so persistently and successfully in ’80s horror; nor an under-appreciation of somebody like Jamie Lee Curtis, who struggled to make it out of the style area at first, solely to star in a number of traditional comedies, some major-auteur motion photos, and ultimately received an Oscar, whereas nonetheless discovering time to reprise her most well-known horror position a number of instances. However in 2024, if actresses gravitate towards and excel in horror, they’ll usually keep in horror with out sacrificing some all-timer roles or serious-acting cred. Have a look at Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Kathryn Newton, and Rebecca Corridor; they’re all performed a number of horror films, and lots of of them arguably have stronger general filmographies than bona fide superstars like Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Lopez. The queen amongst these queens, because it had been, could also be Maika Monroe.

Monroe shouldn’t be a family identify; Goth might be extra well-known, by identify or by face, partially as a result of she’s performed loads of non-genre fare like Emma, and Ortega probably has them each beat because of the youth vote (plus, it’s not as if Wednesday or Scream are precisely arthouse obscurities). However Monroe might need one of the best trendy horror-thriller filmography within the recreation: David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows and its upcoming sequel; Adam Wingard’s The Visitor; Chloe Okuno’s Watcher; a pair of intimate genre-benders from Dan Berk and Robert Olsen referred to as Villains and Important Different; and now Longlegs, a serial-killer horror image from Osgood Perkins that appears poised to grow to be a shock summer time hit for Neon.

On this impressively unsettling movie, Monroe performs Lee Harker, maybe not coincidentally sharing a surname with a well-known sufferer of Dracula. No blushing bride, Harker is an FBI agent on the path of a serial killer—a sort of position that non-scream queens Bullock and Lopez, by the way, have each kind of performed, again when serial-killer films had been the classier manner of dabbling in horror. (Thank Jodie Foster for her superlative work in Silence of the Lambs, the one horror film to win Finest Image, upon which it appeared to now not rely as horror anymore.) In story and construction, Longlegs isn’t all that totally different from Silence or the opposite horror-agnostic movie-star thrillers that adopted it within the ’90s, however Perkins directs it with an eye fixed towards existential, reasonably than situational, unease. Dread isn’t only for exploring darkish corners of a killer’s lair; it pervades even (or particularly) the best of the film’s frames.

Monroe arrives well-suited to this surroundings; she performs worry and unease significantly properly, largely by belowenjoying them. Harker’s investigation of the killer often known as Longlegs (performed, in a couple of scenes, with uncanny creepiness by a semi-recognizable Nicolas Cage) uncovers loads to shock and terrify her, and Monroe by no means seems numb to the horror. On the similar time, she appears ready, in some way, past her FBI coaching. It’s an ineffably pre-haunted high quality that Perkins turns right into a spooky literal superpower; early on, it’s clear that Harker has some form of refined extrasensory notion. That’s not the case together with her character in Watcher, however that film, the place Monroe performs an unwilling housewife out of the country who involves suspect she’s being stalked, is dependent upon an identical skill to lock into looming, atmospheric threats that others can’t essentially see.