Longlegs, the unnerving horror gem appears to be on everyone’s thoughts over the weekend, especially since it made over $20 million in the United States.
Longlegs features FBI agent Lee Harker, a talented new recruit assigned to an unresolved cold case involving the serial killer known as “Longlegs.” Longlegs specifically targets families with daughters born on the 14th and leaves cryptic, Satanic coded messages at homicide scenes.
Lee dives deeper into the investigation, uncovering a sequence of esoteric clues and horrifying findings that point to a link between the deaths and her own background. Lee is able to read the signals, and we find that this could be because Longlegs is linked to her history, when he visited her as a kid but spared her despite the fact that she was born in the fourteenth century.
Lee must race against the clock to unravel the clues and stop Longlegs before he takes the life of another innocent family. She eventually realises Longlegs must be working with someone else to commit these killings. She and other FBI agents are able to apprehend Longlegs, but he commits suicide during their interrogation.
The clues he gives her lead her home, where she discovers that her mother works for Longlegs and that he has been residing in her basement all along. It turns out that they implanted Satan’s spirit into dolls, which she then distributes, convincing people inside homes to commit suicide or murder their family.
Her mother does this because she decided to trade these horrific crimes to preserve her daughter’s life when she was a child. All of Lee’s repressed memories return as her mother describes what happened to her. Lee’s mother uses a devilish doll to knock her out. Then she goes to Lee’s boss’s house, where his child will be celebrating his 14th birthday.
Lee tries to stop her, but by the time she arrives, the doll has already possessed the father, who kills the mother. Lee is able to shoot her mother and boss, but runs out of ammo before she can shoot the doll.
The film closes on a cliffhanger, leaving us wondering if Lee can shake the devil and save the girl, or if the doll will convince her to kill herself and the child. The finale of Longlegs leaves much to the viewer’s interpretation.
After a traumatic investigation, FBI agent Lee Harker realises that her own mother has been Longlegs’ partner for decades, helping him murder ten families with handmade satanic dolls. In a tragic last confrontation, Lee is compelled to kill her mother to prevent further harm, knowing that she made this horrific sacrifice to save Lee’s life.
However, with the devilish doll still in play, Lee has run out of shots. She is left staring at the doll and grasping the girl’s hand. This ambiguous ending raises the question of whether the cycle of evil has actually ended, or if Lee, presumably persuaded by the doll and Longlegs, would carry on his deadly heritage by murdering the kid and possibly herself.
The movie finishes with a sense of dread, implying that the darkness they faced may not be completely overcome. What really resonates is that it raises the question of whether evil can ever truly be conquered.