Run time: 101 mins

Osgood Perkin’s skin-crawling chiller hums and buzzes with menace.

Gifted with unique psychic abilities, fresh FBI recruit Lee is tasked with investigating a cold case involving three decades of violent murder-suicides within families. Immediately identifying unsettling patterns in the case, she’s begins to pursue a mysterious and eccentric figure known as Longlegs (a wild and unpredictable Nicholas Cage) who appears to possess the ability to control people’s minds, driving them to commit brutal acts against their own families. As the investigation deepens, parallels with her past and hidden family secrets plague Lee’s consciousness while Lee’s mother Ruth appears to know more than she’s letting on.

While the initial setup evokes Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs evolves into something entirely different. Disorienting cinematography, combined with nerve-wracking audio and visual editing, keeps things in a constant state of unease. Maika Monroe shines as Lee, a young woman clearly hiding something about her past, maybe even from herself. However, Alicia Witt’s steals the show as Lee’s unhinged mother, Ruth, delivering some of the film’s most powerful moments.

Only about once every two or three years does a horror-thriller as frightfully entertaining as Longlegs make an appearance. When it does, it’s something to be savoured.