Longlegs

 Remember the big spider the Daddy Longlegs?  A catchy thing to say for a kid.  And also a catchy name for a serial killer.

Maika Monroe is FBI Agent Lee Harker, a new agent.  She proves herself to have good instincts and is assigned to the Longlegs case where the killer has left a list of messages in code.  

We see flashes of Longlegs played by Nicolas Cage dressed in a Joker-type facepaint.   He has long hair and has an androgenous look.   His hair, face, and clothes are all a greyish white, making it hard to tell his age.

Harker is paired with an older FBI Agent Carter (Blair Underwood, from L.A. Law) and they try to figure out who is Longlegs.  Ultimately in the final showdown, they do figure it out.

The movie is set in the mid 90s before the Internet, so the missing person is more apt to stay hidden (Searching for Sugar Man).  The tools used are relatively primitive for modern crime fighting - no cell phone towers, no location tracking)

Billed as a horror movie, it's more of a mystery thriller.  Very much influenced by The Silence of the Lambs and even its predecessor Manhunter (1986).

Interesting that the writer and director Osgood Perkins is the son of the original Psycho Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates).

A creative and complicated plot which will leave many questions after watching.

* * * * of 5