I saw this film with high hopes, fueled by good word of mouth from several members of my blogging community, and it's surprising performance at the box office. I love Nicolas Cage, and I am always willing to give him wide latitude on his acting choices because they are so out there. I had not seen a trailer for the film before I went, so the only thing I was aware of were the comparisons some had made to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven". Brother, are these people overselling this pile of excrement. I started having doubts a few minutes in, and by the time the film was done, I loathed it. Sorting your sock drawer is a more productive use of two hours.
The film starts out as a procedural, but quickly turns into a supernatural thriller when our hero turns out to be psychic. No wait, she is only half psychic because she only scored 50% on a test that the FBI has for supposed psychics. So we are plunged into a world with no worldbuilding, almost immediately. Agent Lee Harker fingers a house where the bad guy is, by just looking around. We don't actually know why they are in this neighborhood in the first place, but whatever. A tragedy occurs when the partner she has been assigned to, ignores her warning and request for back up. The two of them feel like the most inept FBI agents ever, they will fit right in with the Secret Service team that was supposed to be protecting Trump. They are not sympathetic, they are pitiable.
Just to add to the stupidity, her supervising agent, is an alcoholic who has been working the serial killer case they are on, for a dozen years without any progress. Whether he is incapable of reading her social reticence or is simply pushing her to grow, he comes across as completely thoughtless. When he forces her to meet his family, the director might just has well hung a sign over the front door which reads" Here lives the family That will be targeted at the end of the film". It was such a ham fisted moment it probably tainted everything for me for the rest of the film. In truth though, nothing happens in the first part of the movie that gives this any verisimilitude. Harker comes across as a naif, rather than a steely mind in the FBI. The production design also undermines the film. The time period is set in the 1990s for no particular reason. The location is supposed to be the Seattle area, but making the FBI offices look like log cabins or paneled walls from the 70s seem amateurish.
The three performances that matter the most are inconsistent. Maike Monroe who plays Harker, is doe eyed and a waif. Even though Jodie Foster's character in "Silence of the Lambs" is being diminished by the men around her, she still felt like a woman, not a shrinking violet. She can hardly make her voice heard, she moves suspiciously slow in every scene and she just never seems to be up to the job. The only thing she might have going for her is that "psychic" vibe, but there is no backstory on how it might have helped her get into the FBI. Her mother is played by Alicia Witt. This character starts setting off warning signals when we just hear her voice over the telephone line. When we encounter her, the phrase "hoarder" comes immediately to mind. This film was produced by the company "NEON", they might just as well put neon signs around every foreshadowing twist. 
Finally, let's get to Nic Cage. The part of Longlegs is a serial killer with satanic influences. We don't get any clues to that except the cryptic messages he leaves in code, so the idea that this is a procedural investigation film goes out the window. This is an X-Files episode that was not strong enough to make it to the screen, unless you have a strong visual hook. Enter Nicholas Cage, in make-up that renders him unrecognizable, and with mannerisms that would set off an air raid siren for every police official within a hundred miles of him. Cage screeches through some dialogue, pops his eyes out, and contorts his body enough to be creepy to look at. Who in their right mind would let a character like this any where near their family? When we get an exposition dump at the start of the third act, we are asked to accept some incredulous ideas and just go along with them because we now get to see some flashbacks. This film tries to make a mystery of the means of killing, rather than exploiting the supernatural and satanic story that is really there.
I have been an outlier before on some horror based films. I disliked "The VVitch", hated "The Lighthouse", laughed at "US" and now I am dismissing "Longlegs". I don't have to have something conventional, but I do need something that is coherent and does not insult my intelligence, a standard that this film cannot meet.
