Longlegs is the most unnerving American horror film of 2024 and one of the few in recent memory that takes Satanism seriously as a moral force rather than as ironic aesthetic. Osgood Perkins — son of Norman Bates himself — has made a deeply strange, deliberately disorienting film about an FBI agent who is psychically connected to a Satanic serial killer, and the result is not for everyone. But for viewers willing to surrender to its atmospheric logic rather than demand conventional procedural satisfaction, it is genuinely, uncomfortably frightening.

The premise sounds like serial-killer procedural boilerplate: FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is assigned to a decades-old cold case involving a killer called Longlegs who has been murdering families without leaving a trace of himself at the scenes. The victims' families always include a member with a birthday on the 14th. The killer leaves cryptic Satanic coded letters signed by the number 7. Harker has an uncanny gift for intuiting crime scenes — she finds things no one else can — and her boss (Blair Underwood) believes this gift makes her the right person for the case.

Nicolas Cage plays Longlegs, and this is one of the genuinely memorable villain performances in recent horror. The role required Cage to disappear behind a prosthetic transformation — a distended, wax-pale face, wig, and falsetto voice — and the result is something that exists outside normal categories of film performance. Longlegs is not a calculating intellectual like Hannibal Lecter. He is childlike, frantic, devoted, and completely off his axis — a man who made a deal with the Devil and has been faithfully executing his end for decades with the fervor of a true believer. The performance is both disturbing and oddly pitiable. Cage commits entirely, which is the only way this kind of maximalist horror character works.

Perkins is not interested in the procedural mechanics of how investigations actually work. The film operates on dream logic: images arrive with the weight of meaning before their significance is explained, if it is explained at all. Harker experiences the case partly as a psychological crisis — her connection to Longlegs seems to run deeper than investigative intuition, and the revelation of how that connection works is the film's central horror. The pacing is deliberately fragmented and disorienting, which will frustrate viewers who want conventional thriller architecture and reward those who treat it as experiential horror.

From a VirtueVigil perspective, Longlegs scores considerably better than the average 2024 horror release. The film presents Satanism as genuine evil with genuine supernatural power — not as a metaphor for capitalism or a misunderstood alternative spirituality, but as actual demonic influence operating in the world. Longlegs made a deal with a real Devil and the results are real dead families. The film's moral universe is unambiguous on this point: what Longlegs serves is evil, what it produces is destruction and death, and the FBI agent opposing it is engaged in genuine spiritual warfare even if she does not fully understand it in those terms. This is a traditional moral framework that most contemporary horror refuses.

The film's progressive elements are limited and mostly structural rather than ideological. Lee Harker is a female FBI agent, but her characterization is not feminist empowerment — she is fragile, psychically damaged, and the film emphasizes her vulnerability as much as her capability. The supporting cast is diverse in ways consistent with contemporary genre casting. These are not the film's concerns. Perkins's concern is atmospheric dread, and he achieves it.

Longlegs was a commercial hit that divided critics — some found it intellectually pretentious for its refusal to explain itself conventionally, while others found it the most effective American horror of the year. Both camps are right about what they observe; they disagree about whether the experience is worth the discomfort. For VirtueVigil readers who appreciate horror that treats evil as evil and the spiritual stakes as genuine, Longlegs is one of the better recent offerings in its genre.

Trope	Category	Location	Authenticity
Female Protagonist in Authority Role	WOKE	Lee Harker — female FBI agent as the story's protagonist and investigative authority	Natural. The female investigator role is genre-functional rather than ideologically foregrounded. The film does not frame Harker's gender as a statement.
Diverse Supporting Cast	WOKE	Blair Underwood as Agent Carter; Michelle Choi-Lee as Agent Browning	Natural. Standard contemporary casting for an original genre property. Not foregrounded as ideological.
Psychological Vulnerability as Character Depth	WOKE	Harker's fragility, psychic sensitivity, and psychological damage as character traits	Natural. The vulnerability serves the horror mechanics rather than progressive trauma-as-identity politics.
Evil Is Evil — Moral Clarity	TRAD	Satanism presented as genuine evil with genuine power; Longlegs's devotion to the Devil is real, not metaphorical	Organic. The film's most notable traditional quality — it refuses to ironize or explain away its villain's evil as social product or misunderstood difference.
The Spiritual Dimension of Evil	TRAD	The supernatural framework — Satanic pact, demonic influence, psychic warfare — treated as genuinely real within the film's world	Organic. The film builds its horror on the premise that spiritual evil is a real category. This is a traditional moral framework.
Justice as Moral Imperative	TRAD	Harker's investigation — stopping Longlegs is not procedural duty but moral necessity; the families deserve protection	Organic. The investigative imperative is framed as protection of the innocent against genuine evil.
Warning Against Occult / Satanic Devotion	TRAD	Longlegs's entire arc — a man who made a deal with the Devil and has been destroyed by it while destroying others	Organic. The film presents Satanic devotion as producing only suffering and death. It is a genuinely moral horror film.
Defense of the Innocent	TRAD	The FBI investigation — protecting future families from the killer's murders; the moral weight of failure (families already dead) drives the urgency	Organic. The protective motivation is the story's moral engine.
Consequence and Accountability	TRAD	Longlegs's fate — devotion to evil produces destruction; his final confrontation carries genuine moral consequence	Organic. The film does not excuse, rehabilitate, or contextualize Longlegs's evil. Consequence is real and final.