Film Fatale: Longlegs was Made For the Women of America
Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
Make it stand out
I have a confession: I have been listening to true crime podcasts. On my walks to get a coffee, make dinner, and even drift off to sleep - two women, probably from the Midwest, are nattering in my ears about how relatable the victim is for being girl boss queen (she died in an office block) and thank God her doggo survived (the killer let her chihuahua live). As many experts have said, indulging in this type of content is unhealthy for the mind, although I don’t believe it takes a doctor of psychology to connect these dots. I think of this every time I wake up and realise I have accidentally listened to about 10 episodes while I have slept; I then worry my Crime Junkie podcast bedtime routine will turn me into a hotter and more successful Lee Harvey Oswald, JFKs assassinator that some suspect to be a victim of mind control by the CIA.
True crime has dominated popular media long before podcasts - hundreds of years before Talk Tuah reached #4 on the Spotify charts. Prior to print media becoming readily available to the public, the 1500s enjoyed ballads that detailed horrific crimes, public executions brought people together until the late 1800s, and the first true crime magazine True Detective was published in 1924. Since the advent of television and accessible filmmaking, the screen has been a non-stop cycle of interviewing vulnerable family members of the deceased on worn sofas, upsetting convicts who may or may not be innocent through the muffled glass of the visitor room, and shoddy reconstructions of the worst moments of a person’s life featuring E-list actors.
In order to protect my brain from in-depth descriptions of horrific scenes constantly pouring into my ears, I spent my Saturday giving myself a break with some cinematic retellings and complete fiction: Zodiac (2004) directed by David Fincher and Longlegs (2024) directed by Oz Perkins.
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If you’re going to exploit any crime and make a film out of it, it may as well be The Zodiac Killer. The case which unfolded in Northern California in the late 1960s involved taunting and threatening letters, unsolvable ciphers, and a group of investigators that fit the bill for interesting protagonists. We mainly follow the awkward and dedicated Robert Graysmith played by Jake Gyllenhaal - a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in which some cryptic letters and ciphers are sent - as he becomes obsessed with figuring out who Zodiac is.
I love Zodiac, it is named as the greatest crime film ever made for good reason and it makes you want to dig into the detective genre more, but when you do you realise there are some missed opportunities going on - which is why Longlegs, despite what some may say, is scratching the itch.
By now I assume most people have seen or know about Longlegs due to its incredible marketing campaign, but if the phenomenon escaped you this year, here is a short description: Lee Harker, played by scream queen Maika Monroe, is an unsociable and highly intuitive FBI detective who is put on a cold case of murder-suicides. She follows a trail of occultist clues that leads her to (spoiler) an androgynous, satanic, and Marc Bolan-inspired Nicolas Cage.
“The ethics of the genre are difficult to defend, but morbid curiosity is innate and many trace the American woman’s adoration of true crime to catharsis and the identification with the victims.”
Do I wish Longlegs sang more? Yes. Do I wish Lee Harker spoke a little more? Yes. Do I wish it cooled off on the supernatural elements? Yes. But in a time of Netflix true crime documentaries dominating the aesthetic of the crime genre - fact or fiction - with drone stockfootage of LA and lazy uses of eerie music to add tension instead of context, we needed a Longlegs to put creativity, and women, back into the American detective film. It has been 32 years and 10 months since Silence of the Lambs (1991) (not that I’m counting) and what do we have to show for it? True Detective season 4 with the CGI deer and polar bear?
No one loves true crime more than the American woman. She is twice as likely to listen to true crime podcasts than a man and makes up around 80% of listeners and viewers of true crime TV - so, putting ethics and mental wellness aside - she deserves a little treat from the film industry. Maika Monroe is excellent as Harker and gives the viewers what they want: hands on hips before a corkboard of endless evidence, torch in hand as she explores terrifying buildings and a mind that seems made to be an FBI agent. She makes you wonder if detectives count in ACAB because this all looks pretty cool, minus the extreme trauma. She’s just like me when I’m down the Reddit rabbit hole fr.
Women aren’t freaks for loving true crime, although I’m sure some are. The ethics of the genre are difficult to defend, but morbid curiosity is innate and many trace the American woman’s adoration of true crime to catharsis and the identification with the victims. This isn’t to say there should be more podcasts with distasteful names or more ladies cracking jokes about murder as they do their cut-crease on YouTube, but if so many of the true crime listeners are coming from a place of emotional connection and personal worry - is this not a good place to start when deciding who gets to take the lead in the next great American crime movie?
