Hallmark Is Harboring Thespians

Warning: This blog contains spoilers for Longlegs.

Not since Scream has a seemingly innocuous question (“Do you like scary movies?”) ever sounded so sinister. Then, in crept Longlegs, Osgood Perkins’ new—and already acclaimed—procedural that follows an FBI agent’s pursuit of a Satanic serial killer only to learn that in this case, one seven-headed and 10-horned beast begets another. Anchored by an ensemble cast that includes this generation’s definitive scream queen, Maika Monroe as Agent Lee Harker and Nicolas Cage as the titular specter, Longlegs has been compared to Silence of the Lambs and deemed the “scariest film of the year.”

Is it? So far, yes–at least where wide releases are concerned. But if I’m being honest, it wasn’t Cage’s glam rock “gross old guy” from hell that I found most horrifying. In fact, there were moments I found Cage to be anything but. Instead, it’s Alicia Witt as Harker’s mother, Ruth, who’s the absolute revelation here—and by revelation I mean Revelation 13:1, specifically.

“Are you still saying your prayers?” Ruth asks her adult daughter in her decaying childhood home at the film’s halfway point. As the audience gets its first glimpse at Harker’s reclusive, religious mother, the agent is on the precipice of discovering Longlegs’ horrific motivations behind his decade-spanning familial decimation and, more importantly, that he couldn’t possibly have carried out all of these murders by himself. Maybe it’s her hollow—ever-so-slightly menacing—expression or, the fact that my dad still asks me the same question from time to time though the answer is always no, but Ruth’s inquiry in the middle of it all is downright disquieting.

 

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It’s a testament to Witt’s calculated performance that though she might prove suspicious, she’s not immediately a suspect. Where Longlegs embodies rampant lunacy, Ruth offers restraint—so much so that when it’s eventually revealed she’s forcibly served as his psychologically wrought accomplice in the film’s third act, every other person (myself included) in the theater quite literally uttered an audible, “Oh, no!”

Much has been said—and will continue to be—about Cage’s teetering-on-garish take on what many could argue is just another horror genre trope. Witt, on the other hand, is so impressive that I found myself perusing her IMDB page in an attempt to decipher where I’d seen the prolific performer before. Dune (the 1984 version)? Certainly not. Sorry. Vanilla Sky? A bit before my time. Then, there it was: Hallmark’s own Christmas On Honeysuckle Lane. That’s right, Witt’s practically a network regular—I would know. Against my will, I have seen every Hallmark Christmas movie at least twice.

I’ve long known the network tends to be where Hollywood’s over-thirty hotties go to retire, but that it could be harboring this caliber of talent? Good on Oz Perkins for going where too few notable directors go these days: Honeysuckle Lane. Just kidding. Kind of. And good on Alicia for continuing to prove that she’s far more than a one-dimensional rom-com protagonist on the hunt for her happy heteronormative ending.

In all seriousness, I think it’s high time we mobilize to get some more Hallmark alums in the next generation of elevated horror. I’m talking about a Lacey Chabert and David Cronenberg linkup. Rachel Leigh Cook, have you by chance met A24? Mariah Carey…there’s a final girl in there somewhere.