Longlegs movie review The best-selling independent horror film of 2024

Fun fact: did you know that Osgood Perkins, the director of “Langdrazz,” is the son of Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (in fact, he played Norman Bates as a child in the “Psycho” sequel when he was eight years old)? The commonality of these two films is not limited to the family relationship of these two people, but also explains the biggest thing that has made “Langdraz” the phenomenon of the horror cinema of 2024: its unconventional advertising approach that borrows Hitchcock’s tricks. Osgood Perkins’s fourth feature film, which presents his unconventional but exciting filmmaking taste in its most evolved form to date, is also his most popular film: The Lame, with its $101 million worldwide (from a $10 million budget), is not only the highest-grossing film of all time. It is Neon Studio, but it has also been called the most successful original horror film of this year at the global box office. Its $74 million gross at the North American box office makes it the highest-grossing independent horror film of the last decade, surpassing “Talk to Me” ($48 million). “Langdraz” owes this achievement to two things: its creative and mysterious advertising campaign, which had an immeasurable effect in arousing the audience’s curiosity and filling their patience to watch it; And more importantly, the surprising cinematic quality of the film itself, which helps it to meet the high expectations of the followers of its advertising campaign to a great extent.

One of the legendary aspects of “Psycho” is its innovative trailer; Although trailers often follow a predictable pattern (a montage of film stills with music and voiceover), this is not the case for this one: instead, it features Hitchcock himself on camera as if he were a TV news anchor. does; He tours the Bates Inn, the main location of his film, and, acting as a tour guide, gives clues about the gruesome crimes that took place there.

Hitchcock’s approach, treating his film locations as if they were real crime scenes, took on a new form decades later in the age of the Internet: 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, which cost a paltry $35,000 to shoot. It achieved a record-breaking revenue of 248 million dollars. A large part of the success of “Blair Witch” came from its unprecedented online publicity campaign, which claimed that the film we see was made from found footage from the abandoned cameras of three missing young filmmakers. To make this claim even more convincing, the film’s official website was launched, which included police reports, TV news-like interviews, information about the missing students, and childhood photos of its actors. Additionally, during the Sundance screening of the film, the filmmakers distributed flyers asking viewers to come forward with any information they may have about the missing students.

The “Blair Witch” website became a complement to the documentary filmmaking style of the film, fueling the debate among Internet users about whether they were on the side of a real documentary or a work of fiction. The revolutionary advertising approach of The Blair Witch Project is a product of its time and will never be replicated, but the film forever changed the way audiences interacted with entertainment. The creators of “Blair Witch” took advantage of the flourishing capabilities of the Internet, pushed the boundaries of the movie world beyond the frame of the cinema screen and expanded it to include people’s homes and online discussion forums. In this type of advertising, the audience’s engagement with the imaginary world of the movie begins not when the lights of the movie theater go off, but long before he steps into the theater. The important lesson that “Blair Witch” taught to movie marketing was that advertising itself can also be a part of storytelling and entertainment; It was that the characters and the world of a film can find a new life in other mediums; He taught that every Internet user is a potential free marketer who can play an effective role in promoting the movie. In this case, instead of the advertisers searching for the audience, it is the audience that is encouraged to actively and deeply engage with the promotional materials of the film. The point I want to get to with this introduction is that “Langdraaz”, which was released at the same time as the 25th anniversary of “The Blair Witch Project”, had perhaps the best and most successful online advertising campaign since then.

The first teaser of this movie was nothing more than a 36-second clip titled “Every Year There’s Another One”, and it was released on Neon Studio’s YouTube channel without any additional explanation. During this clip, while the camera gradually zooms in on a souvenir photo of a smiling family, the recorded voice of the father of the family, who called the police, can be heard raving and slaughtering his wife and daughter. The ambiguous nature of this clip, in addition to the letters and codes scattered throughout it, immediately aroused the curiosity of Internet users to decipher it. In addition, a Blair Witch Project-style website called “The Birthday Murders” was launched, which contained all the information on the victims of the Langde case.

The secret included violent photos of crime scenes and encrypted notes the killer had sent to the police. Another promotional material of the film was a phone number that was seen on a billboard in Los Angeles; Calling it and hearing the muttering whispers of Nicolas Cage in the role of a lame man! But perhaps the most viral piece of promotional material for the film is a clip depicting Micah Monroe’s character walking into an interrogation room to confront a cripple whose face has been censored by a black square (because another of the film’s publicity tricks was that the studio had refused to publish any photos or videos of Nicolas Cage’s make-up as the lame man). Meanwhile, a text appears on the screen that says: During the filming of this sequence, Micah Monroe was so worried about her first encounter with her co-star’s makeup that her heart rate increased from 76 beats per minute to 170 beats! In short, “lame” marketing focused on arousing the most primitive human fear: the fear of the unknown.

The reality is that the horror genre and hyped-up hype campaigns have always been inseparable from each other. For example, William Castle, the director of the 1958 film “Macabre”, not only hired several fake nurses to stand by in the lobby of movie theaters, but also parked hearses outside the theaters; In this way, he convinces ticket buyers that his movie is so guaranteed to be scary that they might need an emergency doctor! Or, as another example, remember the promotional trailer for the first episode of “Paranormal Activity”, which included images of the reactions of the terrified moviegoers in the movie theater, which were recorded using a night vision camera; Each of the screams and turns of the audience was a seal of approval for its claim as “one of the scariest films in history”. Another recent example was the 2013 remake of “The Wicked Dead,” whose promotional poster in large font promised “the scariest movie you’ll ever experience.”

Most of the time, by portraying his characters in medium or wide shots, with symmetrical compositions and long pauses, the filmmaker encourages the audience’s eyes to constantly search the empty and dark space behind them, which may be occupied by something unknown at any moment.

In other words, the producers of horror films have always been alien to adjusting or adjusting the expectations of the audience. Arousing the feeling of confusion that the “Langdraz” advertising campaign has resorted to can be an effective tool to attract the audience. For example, one of the banned trailers for “The Exorcist,” which was too disturbing for Warner Bros. to release, and which William Friedkin himself called his best trailer, refuses to reveal the details of the film’s plot, instead bombarding our senses with it. With black and white images of the scarred and evil face of Reagan’s character, it plunges us into a terrifying trance from which we cannot take our eyes off. Instead of telling what the movie is about, the unreleased trailer for “The Exorcist” recreates the experience the audience will have while watching the original movie. This is somewhat true of the “Langdraz” advertising campaign that encouraged mass detective games among its followers.

But the danger that threatens such films is that: maybe these types of advertising campaigns are effective in bringing the audience to the cinema, but the film itself may not appear as much as the inflated expectations of the audience. The worst fate that can be imagined for these films is that in the end, their promotional materials will be more creative and stronger than themselves. Fortunately, “Langdraz” assures the audience from its startling opening sequence that it will not suffer this fate (or at least not until its finale, which I will explain later). “Langdraaz” is one of those horror films whose openings can function as a complete stand-alone short film: from the opening sequence of a classic like “The Exorcist” which takes place in Iraq to the opening fifteen minutes of a modern cult film like “The Hollow Man” which It takes place in the mountains of Tibet. Their common feature is that they not only effectively frame the threat of their antagonists, but also set up a mystery that the rest of the film is dedicated to unraveling. The plot of “Langdraz”, which borrows from some classic works of the detective genre, is familiar to everyone; Here I am dealing with the unsolved case of Maujiham, which has claimed about 40 victims over the past three decades, but the manner of death of each victim follows the same pattern: an ordinary and faithful father, without any reason, suddenly realizes that he must first slaughter his wife and small children. and then commit suicide.

The police have been unable to find any evidence to prove that someone outside the house was present at the time of the crime. The only thing these baffling crimes have in common is a birthday card sent to the police by a man nicknamed “Lame”. Police have so far failed to find an answer to the mystery of how Langdraz convinced these fathers to kill their families. It is at this point that Lee Harker (Mica Monroe) as a young FBI agent

A Clarice Sterling-esque daredevil enters the story: What prompts her boss to add her to the lame-duck case is that Harker has a kind of paranormal psychic ability that evokes Danny Torrance’s power of brilliance in Stanley Kubrick’s film or the character’s power of visualization in Will Graham is from the series “Hannibal”. After Harker uses this power to find the house where a criminal is hiding among a series of similar houses, his boss, who has failed in all other attempts to solve the long-running case, is ready to turn it over to someone who might have some knowledge. be absent

Based on this synopsis, “Lang-Draz” looks like one of those films that has no creativity or unique identity of its own, but is an inauthentic collage of its director’s sources of inspiration. Set around a young female agent in the 1990s (and obviously no smartphone in sight), the film evokes the retro, analog quality of The Silence of the Lambs and The X-Files. Also, Langdraz’s personal interest in Lee Harker is reminiscent of Clarence Sterling’s exceptional relationship with Hannibal Lecter. Traces of “Seven” and “Zodiac” are also abundant in Perkins’ scenario: from the killer’s cryptic notes to the police to the idea of ​​the killer’s deliberate surrender as part of his long-term evil plan. In addition to these, the form of depicting the desolate landscapes and gray skies of America during the presidency of Bill Clinton, its apocalyptic and nihilistic atmosphere that weighs heavily on the audience’s chest, the prominence of symbols and occult rituals and the possibility of supernatural forces playing a role in a criminal case, all, the first chapter of ” They remember “True Detective”. Finally, the final twist of the film that combines the two elements of “Mother” and “Underground” is reminiscent of the ending of Hitchcock’s “Psycho”.

Despite this, the filmmaker has not only filtered all these familiar elements through the filter of his personal life and filmmaking taste, but as he himself has said in his interviews, his initial excessive reliance on a predictable pattern was a deliberate approach to instill a false sense of security in the audience. so that the deviation of the film from its familiar path feels more awkward. For example, Monroe’s performance in the form of Lee Harker is only superficially similar to the archetype of Clarice Sterling or Dana Escoli. In the decade since Monroe starred in The Guest and She Chases, she has not only enthusiastically embraced her cinematic identity as a full-on modern scream queen, but gradually refined it. And it has matured the melancholy dignity and soulful energy it emits. Munro somehow blends his character’s serious and formal demeanor with a childish quivering voice, a brooding look, and a sort of quiet but growing sense of dread that gives Lee Harker a unique identity. Especially considering that here we are dealing with a film that relies on fantastical concepts such as occult science, hypnotic possessed dolls and horned demons. For such a film to be taken seriously and to achieve emotional impact, it needs an actor who lives these concepts as a natural and tangible part of the world of the film, and Monroe is exactly such an actor.

This defamiliarization is also true about the detective plot of the film: in the usual case, the detective looks for evidence and clues to arrest the murderer; Here, despite what it seems, their role is more complicated; Not only does it seem that Lamdraz knows more about Harker than Harker knows about him, but it is Lamdraz who approaches Harker to give him the clues he needs to solve the case. In this way, Perkins not only creates an interesting twist on the usual cat and mouse games of this genre, but the possibility that the cripple could always be near Harker leads to the creation of several tense situations. At first glance, Harker’s invisibility is an exceptional ability that sets him against the antagonist, but the fact is that we are not watching the process of solving this case, but watching the role that Harker plays as an unconscious accomplice in the realization of his master crime. , we are

Another advantage of “Langdraz” is Perkins’ formalistic filmmaking style and its highly controlled tone; A style that can be compared to a hand that is tied around the audience’s throat from the beginning and does not let go until the end. The film’s suffocating atmosphere comes from unconventional framing and editing, which has a Lynchian quality. Although “Langdraz” has been compared to the detective films of Fincher and Jonathan Demme in terms of its plot, but as Perkins himself has confirmed, the rhythm and the song of his direction follow a work like “Twin Peaks: Walk with Fire”. He sometimes ominously drags out his long takes more than usual, and sometimes cuts earlier than expected, as if we are witnessing the activation of the characters’ instinctive defense mechanism to suppress an indigestible horror. And most of the time, thanks to the depiction of his characters in medium or wide shots, with symmetrical compositions and long pauses, it stimulates the paranoia of the audience and makes our eyes constantly search in the empty and dark space behind them (doors, windows, corridors), which is possible at any moment. to be occupied with something unknown, urges; The characters are naked in front of the camera of Perkins and Ace

They feel acceptable. Perkins knows that the continuous nervous stimulation of the audience in anticipation of something unknown when and from where it will strike is more effective than a sudden shock. During the film, he teaches us that we should scan the empty space around the characters in search of a threat that may enter the frame; But there is a moment of genius towards the end of the film that breaks his own rule: in this moment, we cut from Harker looking for his mother inside the house, to his colleague waiting in the car for her return; The blurry figure of Harker’s mother, standing motionless outside the car, is a part of this frame from the very beginning. His green dress in combination with the trees behind him camouflages him and makes the audience not immediately notice his presence. So, this time, instead of something from the outside entering the frame, suddenly something that was already part of the frame moves.

Throughout the film, there are several point-of-views that have an indescribably demonic and allegorical energy: for example, in the opening shot, the filmmaker depicts the world from the point of view of an unknown person as if a thin black cloth is drawn over his head; He is sitting in the back seat of a moving car; The dry and mechanical turning of this unknown person’s head and his staring at the window of a little girl’s bedroom in the distance is disturbing in itself; But the true horror of this plan becomes tangible after revealing the nature of someone (or something) to whom this look belonged. These words do not mean that Perkins is satisfied with creating a subcutaneous and atmospheric horror. The film’s first artful jumpscare showcases his unparalleled mastery of the mechanics of the technique. But just as a shooter, in order to prove his seriousness and determination to kill and his skill in pulling the trigger, first fires a bullet near his victim’s ear to pay off, Perkins uses the first jumpscare of his film with a similar purpose: he Proving that at any moment he can shatter the fragile stillness of his film’s world with an unexpected onslaught, he imbues his film’s sequel with a slow-burning but growing tension that’s eager to erupt. Anyone else in Perkins’ place would overuse all the situations he creates for Jumpscar so much that they lose their venom and become predictable, but one of the greatest strengths of his direction is that he resists that temptation.

More important than the amount of jumpscares is how to use the few; Jump scares usually have a magnifying function: they focus the fear on a specific point and give it a shocking yet recognizable face. But Perkins’ approach to exploiting this technique is the opposite of the conventional mode: his jumpscares do not have a concentrating, but a dispersing or dispersing effect. Perkins’ jump scares don’t make the menace of his film manageable, but rather increase the range of his activity and terrifying presence. The jumpscar usually lends a physical and resolvable effect to an invisible horror, but the way Perkins uses it in a way that only adds to the horror’s unknowable concentration. In other films, the shock caused by the sudden jump of the threat before the audience disappears as quickly as it appears. In “Langdraz”, however, the initial shock caused by a jumpscar gives way to a prolonged tension. Consider, for example, the film’s first jumpscareer, in which the cripple first reveals himself to the teenage Lee Harker: although the sudden cut to the cripple is shocking, the filmmaker refuses to reveal his face (he looks down from the nose to the picture throughout the sequence). is drawn); Perkins avoids reducing the threat to a concrete figure. As if this threat is more terrifying than it can reach the realm of symbolism; It is more terrifying than to become something spectacular in the frame of the cinema.

Also, there is a dramatic motive behind this decision. As someone who is unable to access his memories due to his memory being manipulated by Satan, Harker cannot clearly remember his encounter with the Limb as a child. At one point in the film, Harker describes his supernatural powers as saying, “It’s like something taps me on the shoulder.” In the end, this evil “thing” comes out of the water. In the world of “Langdraz”, the devil sitting on our left shoulder, whispering in our ear and tricking us into making bad decisions is not a metaphorical story, but literally true. So, this jumpscar doesn’t reduce the presence of the lame to a sudden but passing shock, but rather implicitly points to the extent of the evil that is rooted deep in the life of its hero. In addition, the sudden appearance of the limper ends with Harker’s escape or the end of the sequence, but this initial encounter continues in the form of his strange conversation with Harker, which turns the initial shock into a continuous suspense. In other words, Perkins does not portray the world as a fundamentally safe space whose security is disrupted by external forces; To him, the world itself is fundamentally terrifying, and when the main terror is the world itself, then there will be no one, however close, to trust, no place to take refuge, and no distance, however far, to escape. ; For Lee Harker, there is no way to hide from the evil eyes that have been inside his mind all his life.

Nested, and right in the basement of his childhood home, right below the room where he laid his head on the pillow and slept, it’s gone.

It’s impossible to talk about the thematic idea of ​​”Langdraz” without talking about the personal life of its creator: the opening flashback of the film begins with an all-red screen that gradually fades to give way to the very first shot of the film that I talked about above. The aspect ratio of the film’s flashbacks is square, and there are two black borders on both sides of the image that limit our field of vision; The aspect ratio of the flashbacks itself is a measure to emphasize the blocked parts of Lee Harker’s memory; These memories, as Harker remembers them, do not contain the whole truth. But this arrangement can be interpreted in another way: the gradual fading of the red color that leads to the appearance of the image of the car moving on the road conveys the feeling as if we are watching the process of the emergence of a photograph taken by a Polaroid camera (although, The ratio of the square dimensions of the flashbacks, which have rounded corners, can be reminiscent of family films of the seventies). The Polaroid photo is usually associated with a sense of nostalgia; Polaroid is a symbol of sweet memories of the past. In “Langdraz”, however, the memories of the past are not sweet, but false and treacherous. In fact, Harker finds the limp Polaroid inside his childhood toy chest. The traumatic nature of the past is something that Perkins has personally dealt with throughout his life.

It’s impossible to talk about the thematic idea of ​​”The Limb” without talking about the personal life of its creator: the film is about Perkins’ mother. In his interviews, he said about this: “Mothers are vindictive storytellers. They can tell a different story than what is happening in the children’s own lives or in the lives of their parents. And they do it compassionately, with the goal of protecting their children. But this is not right.”

It’s impossible to talk about Perkins’ films without providing a brief account of his tragic family history: His father, Anthony Perkins, who was gay, died of AIDS in 1992. In the 70s, Anthony, who had been in relationships with men all his life, decided to undergo a five-year process of “conversion therapy”: a pseudoscientific method of changing one’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Then she married Barry Branson at the age of 41. American actress and model Barry Branson, who remained his wife until Anthony’s death, was one of the passengers on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, it is not surprising that Perkins views his works in the horror genre as a kind of autobiography.

For example, I Am a Beautiful Thing That Lives in This House, his second feature film, set in an old haunted house, was dedicated to his father. The film revolves around a woman who moves to the remote home of a writer struggling with amnesia to nurse him. This house was built by a man for his new bride, but the couple disappears on their wedding day, leaving the house unfinished. The nurse’s attempt to put together the puzzle pieces of what happened in the past in this house is a metaphor for digging into the past to know those who are no longer around us. In fact, Perkins has said in interviews that he literally inherited an old house in Massachusetts after his father’s death. He himself said about this film: “This film is deliberately about my attempt to find my father, who was unknown to me. In a way, through this film, I want to make up for the fact that I never had a special relationship with him.”

In comparison, “The Lame” is about Perkins’ mother. In his interviews, he said about this: “Mothers are vindictive storytellers. They can tell a different story than what is happening in the children’s own lives or in the lives of their parents. And they do it compassionately, with the goal of protecting their children. But this is not right.” In “Lang-Draz” we also follow a character whose world view is formed based on a convenient lie that his mother made and told about her childhood to protect her child. Perkins says that he was inspired by his own relationship with his mother to depict Lee Harker’s relationship with his mother. He explains that his father was a gay man (or at least a bisexual man) who had to suppress his true sexual orientation, and this must have been painful for him. According to Perkins, his father had a past life that was incompatible with his current family life. Perkins says that although she and her brother knew as children that something was being hidden from them, her mother failed to provide the language necessary to talk about and understand her father’s true identity. Instead, the narrative that her mother, consciously or unconsciously, was telling them about the nature of her family and her father did not match the complex underlying truth. According to Perkins, his challenge was to resolve the discrepancy between what he felt and what he was told.

In “Langdra

Harker also remembers only scattered images from his childhood, he only feels that something bad happened on his 9th birthday, but he does not have access to the whole truth. Therefore, it is Perkins’ personal experience that leads him to the conclusion that he must turn Harker’s mother into an accomplice of Satan. Also, Barry Branson’s death happened one day before the anniversary of her husband’s death. This coincidental coincidence has not had an impact on the development of the film’s scenario: in “Langdraz” the killer not only targets families whose daughters were born on a particular day of the month, but also kills them a few days before (or after) their birth. No wonder, then, that the corrupting weapon that Harker’s mother uses to make families vulnerable to Satan is a doll. Cursed dolls have a history as old as the horror genre, but Perkins exploits the archetype in a rather novel way: not just in terms of performance (the idea of ​​laying a humanoid doll on an autopsy table and revealing that inside the hollow space of its skull is a metal orb that makes a noise). emits a strangeness, it marks one of the most Lynchian moments of the film), but also thematically: there are many films like “Chucky” or “Annabelle” that deal with the chaos caused by dolls coming to life; In “Langdraz”, however, dolls, a seemingly innocent symbol of girlhood, play the role of Trojan horses that let evil forces into the house. Harker’s liberation from her mother’s false narrative, or her coming of age, is made possible by the disintegration of her doll’s head. “Langdraz” is not about the contamination of all the innocent and beautiful things; Rather, it is about the fact that everything was never innocent and beautiful from the beginning.

But Perkins’ rare mastery over genre elements during the first two acts of the film makes his slip in the ending more noticeable. At the same time, he commits the biggest sin that a horror film and a detective film can commit: providing too much explanation. True terror is based on the feeling of helplessness in the face of the unknown. Some of the best works of this genre not only refuse to resolve too much of their world, but also, in their final moments, turn the reliably solid ground beneath our feet into an endless void, leaving the audience with a sudden loss of their natural balance. At the end of movies like The Shining, Lost Highway, or Under the Skin, we never get the full picture of what we’ve been watching so far, so the nightmare continues in an eternal loop even after the credits roll. It forces him to repeat it again and again. So far, we have talked about several films to which “Langdraz” owes a debt, but talking about the ending is a good opportunity to mention the film that has perhaps had the greatest impact on Perkins’ work: “The Cure”, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s irreplaceable creation. There we are faced with an antagonist who forces his victims to commit murder with similar supernatural power. But if the hypnotic power of “Langdraz” during its first two-thirds is depleted in its final moments, “Dramaan” ends with its nightmarish end-to-end view, to the climax that leaves us empty under our feet and chases us to the credits.

On the other hand, the best detective films are the ones that don’t solve the mystery for the audience, but provide the necessary values ​​and leave it to the audience to gloat with the text to find the values ​​of the equation and reach the answer. “Langdraz” ensures compliance with this rule during its first two acts. For example, early in the film, during an FBI psychological test, Harker has to say a word in response to shapes appearing on the screen. “Father,” he says in response to the inverted triangle, which we later find out is the symbol of Satan. Or in the lame interrogation video-watching sequence, he says to Harker’s colleagues who will be Satan’s future victims: “You’ll be there, and you’ll be there.” Or, as another example, when Harker says to his mother, “I’m not a child anymore,” her mother replies, “You’re not a child because you’ve been allowed to grow up.”

Throughout the film, similar big and small clues are scattered, and the filmmaker just had to trust his audience’s ability to discover them and piece them together to solve the puzzle. But unfortunately, Perkins comes to the conclusion that he should chew the morsel and put it in the audience’s mouth. Therefore, in the final moments of the film, Perkins’ subtle narration gives way to a flashback in which Harker’s mother tells her daughter a bedtime story; A story about a little girl and her mother who lived upstairs from a man who lived in their basement. In the form of this story, he puts all the pieces of the puzzle together for the audience and makes sure to clear any confusion and ambiguities that may exist, and as a result, the film is released sooner than expected. The final sequence of the film is about Harker’s crippling astonishment that he has been the devil’s handmaiden all this time; The person who was claimed to break the lock of this case will complete the devil’s feat by shooting his mother in the head. But the problem is that the audience’s excessive control over the situation, the ample opportunity we have had to digest this twist, prevents us from

Let’s go along with Harker’s confusion.

Finally, we can’t finish talking about this movie without saying a few words about Nicolas Cage: Cage is not only well-known as an Oscar-winning actor, but his brand of acting is so iconic that he recently reprized his role in the metaphysical film The Overwhelming Weight of Talent. had performed, which was a love letter to his four decades of artistic activity. At first glance, it seems that the purpose of choosing Cage is to bury his familiar face under so much heavy makeup that he becomes unrecognizable to the general audience. Not only his limp face, which seems to have been puffed up and distorted due to countless plastic surgeries, but also his singing voice is a combination of flash and ear-scratching from an unnatural giggle of euphoria and a moan of pain. The faded white makeup on her face and swollen lips and upturned nose make her look like an old woman who has just died.

However, even if you watch it without any prior information about the cast of “Langdraz”, in the very opening credits, a phrase is written on the screen that ensures that the audience knows the identity of the actor of the character of “Langdraz”: “Nicolas Cage in the role lame”. In other words, the film doesn’t want its viewers to be surprised to find out that they’ve been watching Nicolas Cage without even realizing it. Instead, it’s as if the film wants to invite us to a challenge: even if you already know who plays the role of the lame, you won’t recognize him! Cage’s performance in Panos Cosmatos’ psychedelic revenge-oriented Mandy was a turning point that revived his career; The film’s most famous shot, with a bloody-faced, bleary-eyed Cage behind the wheel of a car smiling at the camera, provided the first iconic look in his career after a hiatus of many years. “Mandy” not only restored Cage’s reputation, but also tilted his career towards the realm of horror: during this time, he starred in several horror films such as “The Color Out of Space”, “Willy’s Wonderland” and “Renfield”. It is, but none of these films were strong enough to exploit the potential of their star’s fun and unique gender. Cage needed a scenario that would match his abilities. And luckily, “Cripple” is Cage’s first horror film since “Mandy” that proves the actor’s worth.