With summer disappearing behind the stormy season clouds of Autumn, I felt this was a perfect opportunity to try out Rakuten TV, an online streaming service you may not know as well among all the choice, yet they lead the way across Europe with options to rent or purchase the latest films, as well as a host of free content – without subscribing. I’ve got it as an extra app on the PS5, and it’s likely you’ll also find it on your console, or in the apps section of your Smart TV.

I’ll assume you know the primary streamers, if you check out Rakuten TV, you’ll discover they offer a great option for new releases – in this era of early Home Premieres. For this feature, I decided to delve into the much-hyped Longlegs, from writer/director Osgood Perkins, as it’s been on my radar, and test out Rakuten TV. As a quick initial opinion, it’s easy to use and also – and most significantly – the quality of the streaming content itself is excellent!

First things first, all home streaming is dependent on your personal broadband connection, your television capabilities and the resolution options for the film you want. In most modern senses, you can choose from SD (Standard Definition), HD (High Def), or 4K UHD content (Ultra High Def), the latter currently being the finest choice for most people, with UHD television a common factor in most households – especially if you’ve got a relatively new TV the size of an entire wall, or the ability to project (check out my thoughts on the Aurzen Projector here btw) your favourite films in your own home cinema, however you set that up.  

Personally, I always go 4K UHD and, for Longlegs, this is the best accompaniment with its eerie atmosphere and stylistically shot setup. Osgood Perkins’s film has picked up critical plaudits for its style and if you’re new to the genre, there’s absolutely lot to enjoy here – in a surreal, bizarre kind of way. Generally, I could see a host of influences throughout and while I do think it holds some sway, I didn’t always find it quite as smart as the marketing suggested. Is it a horror, a thriller? Let’s open up that box.

Longlegs kicks off its atmosphere in 4:3 ratio, with a 1970s psychological horror style flashback. It’s a creepy opening involving a lone house in the snow, an unexpected car pulling up outside that home and a young girl going to investigate who it is. It’s impressively disturbing, all rounded off by an absolute second of the surreal nature of Nicolas Cage’s character Longlegs. This isn’t a spoiler, but merely a moment of understanding of what’s to come, and there’s no doubt it is unnerving, as well as a bit of a Pennywise vibe later on.

Flash-forward to the mid-90s, and moving away from the 4:3 ratio, we focus in on Maika Monroe’s Lee Harker at work, she’s an FBI agent in a meeting and they’re talking about an unknown killer, and how to root them out. Heading out into the field, with her work partner, to find this man with murderous intent, she has a ‘hunch’ – or a hinted supernatural insight – of where he might be hiding and she’s right…. Although not correct enough to not get her colleague shot in the head before actually finding the culprit.

After this, there’s some type of psyche test for reasons we never really understand, but she’s very good at it – think of the ‘baseline/interlinked’ scene in Blade Runner 2049, or even the Voight-Kampff work in Blade Runner. While we do learn she passes it with flying colours, as commented by Blair Underwood’s Agent Carter (the man who’ll become her FBI partner for the rest of the film), we never really know the point of it, although the test is also in 4:3 – and it looks quite nice if you like a bit of modern art.

While we eventually fall back into hunting down the killer of the opening scene, with Agent Carter and Agent Harker on the case, Longlegs does suffer from select narrative conjecture, which it doesn’t always follow up. That early idea that Monroe’s Harker might have psychic powers, and it’s even mentioned within the FBI setting, seems unusual in a grounded-Police setting, and it’s hard to work out how she even became an FBI Officer (although in the final third, better ideas of ‘why’ are offered) considering how disengaged she is from the reality around her, and then how you’d pass evaluations within an significant occupation.

The only time we see a little spark of life is when she’s speaking to Carter’s daughter early on, and only this made me wonder if there’s a neurodiverse process with her brain being proposed, yet on a surface level. She’s very good at breaking down a mysterious Zodiac-like cypher, although whether she solves this in a dream isn’t completely confirmed, and so it could somewhat celebrate this way of thinking – and as it’s set mid-90s, there was certainly less understanding of neurodiversity (trust me!) – but that’s not really explored.

In trying to fair, I wonder if we find her at a broken stage in her FBI career, where the weight of the job has dragged her down, and her link between the waking and sleep world have started to crash, mould and burn the rest of her life down. She does fall asleep on the job, she does think she sees things in the woods, and Devilish silhouettes in the woods, but she also seems to be given clues in how to solve the crimes in both reality and a dream state, almost leaving the truth out there for audience to decide.

This David Lynch/Stanley Kubrick vibe is all over Longlegs, but the latter certainly comes through more prominently with long, slow shots from a distance, and then they use quick-cut-edits to shock the viewer back into awareness. That Kubrick ‘space’ I enjoy, when it works well it feel potent and like a higher consciousness/evil is afoot, raising questions of whether we’re watching an actual existence, or just a twisted state of mind from a lifetime of intense FBI cases. There’s also an essence of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now in its use of abstract burning/bleeding, a film often emulated in films of this genre.

Maika Monroe is strong and very watchable though, there’s obvious character similarities to Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, but I think that’s purely in the association between the agent and criminal – as this is a separate path. In a general sense, Blair Underwood’s Agent Carter offers a decent co-starring role, although many lines are a little cliched and non-specific, setting up as ‘explain the plot’ moments, despite being an important part of the process.  

And then there’s Nicolas Cage bringing another crazy, visually bothering role to life in the movie world. His performance is unhinged and oddly believable, whatever the motives revealed. Like a character pulled out of The League of Gentlemen, but with an extremely unpredictable nature, Longlegs (the character) definitely sticks in the mind.

Generally, the overarching creepy atmosphere never falters, and the wide shots enable that strangeness to grow and spread out, like a dark, lingering internal psychological breakdown, leading us to a final third of the film that picks up the pace and reveals why everything has occurred. To a point – as well as a few horror tropes including the use of dolls, which turn up without much background – but I did find this much more compelling.

If you’re a fan of Kubrick, Lynch or Roeg, you’ll see their influences all over Perkins’ film – and occasionally emulated – but it’s certainly a journey, so you can understand why most critics tended to enjoy the surreal invention. Terrifying? Not so much. Unsettling? Much more so.

Film Rating

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This Autumn, Rakuten TV also offer a whole host of other films, if Longlegs isn’t really your genre of choice, and I can vouch for the streaming quality – with the UHD being crisp and clean – so draw those curtains, grab a whole host of comforting snacks and find your favourite new film.

If you love a good action-disaster film, then Twisters is big fun – and while they say wasn’t meant as a sequel to the 1996 beauty – it’s half a homage and also a great hit of escapism on its own, with excellent lead chemistry from Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who make the franchise their own and it felt super fresh. Oh, and I highly recommend it with a bassy surround-sound, oh yes!

There’s also M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller Trap, with Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue, where they play father and daughter, and gradually realise they’re at the centre of a dark and sinister event while watching a concert. If you’ve not seen the trailer then don’t as it’ll spoil many things but do just dive right in if you can.  

If you’re a fan of Korean drama, then check out the dark comedy horror mystery Sleep, in which a young expectant wife must figure out how to stop her husband’s nightmarish sleepwalking habits before he harms himself or his family, and then there’s also the magnificent Inside Out 2, the family friendly and wonderfully silly Despicable Me 4, and if you’re after more horror fun then check out Maxxxine with Mia Goth, or A Quiet Place: Day One starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn.

Service Rating

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