Longlegs

! Spolier ? The self-proclaimed 'scariest movie of the decade' is, to no one’s surprise, not scary at all, unsettling at most. It relies on cheap jumpscares for shock value, when it begins building tension, it abandons it and never delivers payoff. Any fear it might create dissipates when the main villain, the devil himself, a mass murderer starts singing in his car like a child. The story is also lackluster, it clearly tries very hard to be Silence of the Lambs, Se7en and The Zodiac at the same time but fails in being like any of them. It tries to follow too many narrative directions at once, and they do not complement each other. The investigative part also falls flat when the main detective is given psychic abilities, undermining any tension it might have brought. The final act is also rushed, the villain turns himself in without clear motivation. We see very little of his character before he kills himself, so he remain unexplored, he comes off as superficially evil, defined only by devil worship. In contrast, the film relies heavily on exposition, spoonfeeding us everything we need to know about the protagonist and her past like we are unable of making some conclusions ourselves. The cinematography is also weak. It over relies on prolonged wide shots regardless of scene context, with minimal shot variation. This lack of visual variation becomes repetitive and stale really quickly.