Say what you will about Nicholas Cage, he always goes for it in whatever movie he’s in. The newly released Longlegs has kept him out of the movie’s marketing in a direct capacity, but slivers of footage and pre-release hype about his reportedly freaky look have drawn a lot of attention. And in playing the titular serial killer targeting families, Cage used parts of his own family history to inform his performance.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Cage recalled a moment from his childhood where he saw his mother Joy Vogelsang putting on Noxzema cold cream. Being two at the time, he remembers seeing her “turn her face really fast and stared at me after [putting on] the cold cream. The whiteness of [it] just really spooked me.” In the film, Longlegs has a ghastly white complexion similar to that moment with Cage’s mother, but without a clear motive. The actor doesn’t have a specific reason as for why his character is so white, but noted the “strange connection” between killer and color. “He says it’s just a force he’s aware of, and you don’t question it too much,” Cage notes. “He knows it when he sees it.”
Performance-wise, Cage previously called this a “deeply personal” role owing to his mother’s schizophrenia throughout her life. In June, he told EW about how she’d talk in poetic terms, something he also brought into Longlegs. To Cage, the character is a tragic figure because he’s “at the mercy of these voices talking to him.” Ahead of shooting in early 2023, he’d record his performance on his phone to nail the character’s “rhythms and melodies. […] By the time I got on set, it was so dialed in and became almost like performing a song or a bit of music.”
Cage’s interview also contains Longlegs spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, don’t go past the banner below.
In the film’s climax, Maika Monroe’s Harker finally comes face-to-face with Longlegs, who’s been giving dolls possessed with Satanic energy to families of girls born on specific days. It’s eventually revealed that he’d targeted her as a young girl, but was spared thanks to her mother’s intervention. The meeting where they “reunite,” and Longlegs’ suicide in front of her, is why Cage joined the film in the first place. The two actors didn’t socialize prior to that point–a move he believes was intentional from director Osgood Perkins–and he’d been really looking forward to the “explosive” encounter between their characters.
Turns out, the scene has a meta layer added onto it. Cage professed to being a fan of Monroe and her horror chops in films like It Follows and Watcher. Like with some audiences, It Follows was his first time seeing her, and he called the film “one of my favorites in the genre.” Cheekily, he also drew parallels between the adoration for his costar and Longlegs’ years-long obsession with Harker, calling her “a hero of sorts” his character finally had the pleasure of meeting.
Before that point, the movie goes out of its way to not shoot Longlegs directly. Instead, he’s glimpsed through different angles or reflections. Perkins explained it as showing how the killer left such an impression on Harker as a child, even as she supressed that memory. He’s there, in a sense, said Perkins, but he’s “totally not there, but [also] totally there.”
From the pre-release buzz, Cage is delivering a pretty unnerving (complimentary!) performance in Longlegs that’s enough to get folks to see it in droves. After seeing him do so many roles over the decades, it’s nice to know that he can find new ways to freak people the hell out.
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