Written and Directed by Osgood Oz Perkins | 101 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Amazon Prime

I’m late to the work of Oz Perkins, but I have it on good authority I should be seeing The Blackcoat’s Daughter. On the strength of Longlegs I look forward to it.

What we have here is evidence of a filmmaker with plenty of ideas, which is a good problem to have — much preferred over the alternative, too few. Longlegs stumbles occasionally because not all of those ideas work, but it’s still very much a stroll worth taking.

The movie is a genre mash-up. We start with the serial killer thriller very much in the mode of Silence of the Lambs, with a young woman, Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), looking to distinguish herself in a profession full of men. It’s clear from the jump she’s an awkward and internal character, perhaps on the Autism spectrum, and brilliant with numbers and patterns. There’s also pretty clear evidence she might be exceptionally intuitive, perhaps evincing psychic abilities. That opens the movie up to its other genre, the supernatural drama.

Despite these kinds movies having shared shelf space in the horror section in those long-closed video stores of the past, the styles aren’t naturally compatible. Serial killer movies of this sort are procedurals that rely on logic and gritty realism to deliver thrills, while the supernatural horror demands a universe a whole lot more expressionistic and faith-based. That Perkins has managed some success in the meld is to his credit.

Harker is assigned to a long cold case of a killer called Longlegs who’s been inspiring murder-suicides for years. How he does it is a bit of a mystery, but the way he chooses the families has something to do with the birthday of the daughters, which Harker deduces through calendars and numerology — suggesting a connection to another Thomas Harris adaptation, Manhunter.

Perkins’ film has a fantastic production design. Along with an entirely creepy score and thoughtful camera movement, it makes for a genuinely harrowing experience at the movies — the sense of dread is cumulative without relying overmuch on gore or jump-scares. The picture is ostensibly set in the early 1990s, drawing more parallels with Lambs, but the vehicles and decor are very much of the 1970s — the adrift-in-time mood of the production just adds to its unnerving tone.

That said, Perkins slathers on the vibe so thick it’s sometimes almost a parody of itself. For instance, Harker lives in a stupidly dark log cabin. Supposedly this is set in the Pacific Northwest, so I guess that makes a kind of sense, maybe, but when the antagonist gets access to it, it’s as if he’s a ghost — the breadth of his abilities are also a little hard to take seriously. Later on Harker and Carter investigate a house and barn that may have been used by the killer, this while a lightning storm hides behind the clouds above. It’s all so relentlessly gloomy, like it’s set in a world where the sun never shines — the gothic spirit eventually smothers realism, doing no favours to the procedural elements in the tale.

Of course, I won’t spoil a clever twist or two, though I will say Longlegs’ plotting is a long way from lock-tight, especially in how the supernatural plays a role in third-act developments. It also suffers with a protagonist who, while readily compelling, is frustratingly passive in key moments.

Despite that, Harker is a fantastic creation from Monroe, whose vulnerability helps keep us rooted in the regularly barmy story — if we weren’t invested in her increasing jeopardy this might be laughable stuff. A similar tip of the critical hat to Alicia Witt as Agent Harker’s hoarder mother, and Kiernan Shipka in an entirely effective single-scene cameo.

You may or may not be aware that Nicola Cage stars as Longlegs — Perkins smartly hides his heavily latexed face from us for awhile. Probably a good idea. He’s an effectively terrifying presence in most of his scenes while also giving a typically bonkers, Cage-like performance.