Starring Nicolas Cage as a satanist mass assassin, Longlegs has been referred to as “the scariest movie of the last decade”. Here is why, regardless of its snowy setting, it is good summer season programming.

I am relieved to report that I did not have nightmares after I watched Longlegs, however I might see why it is perhaps this 12 months’s most talked-about “elevated horror” movie, ie a horror movie that does not depend on bounce scares, however on a pervasive air of dread and disorientation. Its solid and crew are a key issue. The movie’s writer-director is a horror-fan favorite, and he additionally occurs to be the son of the star of Psycho, Anthony Perkins. Its star, Maika Monroe, has been related to high-quality spookiness ever since she appeared in two 2014 movies, It Follows and The Visitor. And her co-star, Nicolas Cage, isn’t happier than when he’s being the weirdest actor in US cinema.

Monroe stars as Lee Harker, an earnest, anti-social FBI agent whose profession is getting underway within the Nineties – sure, Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in Silence Of The Lambs is clearly an affect. Her hunches are so dependable that she could have psychic powers – and within the uncanny netherworld of Longlegs, psychic powers are usually not unheard-of – so she is seconded to research a satanist (Cage) who has slaughtered 10 households over a 30-year interval. Cryptic notes have been discovered on the scene of each crime, however it at all times appeared as if the daddy / husband of every household had murdered his spouse and kids, after which killed himself. The one rational rationalization is that the satanist in some way persuaded different males to do his killing for him. Or, as Harper’s boss (Blair Underwood) places it, “He murders them, however not in individual.”

If that weren’t sinister sufficient, all the lightbulbs within the movie appear to have the bottom potential wattage, and its color palette is dominated by shades of brown – sure, Seven is one other large affect. And Cage, preening and cackling whereas caked in white make-up, reveals us what he would have accomplished if he’d been solid as the Joker in The Darkish Knight. Longlegs can be so snowy and wintry that it might probably’t be lengthy earlier than followers are arguing on social media over whether or not it counts as a Christmas movie.

All of this raises the query of why it’s being launched in the midst of summer season. Why is a skin-crawling serial-killer thriller being requested to compete with the crowd-pleasing, megabudget likes of Twisters and Deadpool & Wolverine? The reply is that it is a crafty instance of counterprogramming – that’s, the observe of releasing a movie across the similar time as one other, higher-profile movie of a starkly completely different style. The thought is that a lot of individuals will go to the cinema over the vacations, however a minimum of a few of these individuals will fancy a substitute for whichever blockbuster is hogging many of the screens of their native multiplex.

What has usually occurred historically is {that a} deafeningly noisy motion epic has been touted as the most important movie of the summer season, so distributors have sneaked out a smaller-scale romantic comedy for anybody craving some mild aid. When Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace got here out in Could 1999, many cinemagoers have been joyful to pop to Notting Hill as an alternative. When The Darkish Knight shrouded Batman in doom and gloom in July 2008, the sunny escapism of Mamma Mia! made a refreshing change. Armageddon and Saving Non-public Ryan have been each launched in July 1998, so it is no marvel that audiences wished to regular their nerves with There’s One thing About Mary.

This kind of counterprogramming light over the previous decade, as Hollywood largely gave up on rom-coms, however final 12 months it got here again with a bang. A number of months after Common introduced that Oppenheimer can be launched on 21 July, Warner Bros introduced that they have been releasing Barbie on the identical day. It virtually felt like a parody of counterprogramming: a furrow-browed Christopher Nolan drama concerning the atomic bomb versus a shiny pink Greta Gerwig comedy a few style doll. However the absurd distinction between the 2 movies turned out to be so irresistible that thousands and thousands of us opted to see them each. 2023 grew to become the 12 months of Barbenheimer.

This summer season, counterprogramming has been remodeled once more. Hollywood romantic comedies similar to A Household Affair and The Thought of You may have been consigned to streaming companies, and there are comparatively few main blockbusters on the schedule – only one Marvel movie, nothing from DC, no new instalment of Star Wars, Jurassic Park or Mission: Inconceivable. That has left the way in which clear for a special number of low-budget alternate options. Somewhat than mild and feelgood movies, we’re getting darkish and feelbad movies, every one scarier and grislier than the final. We have already had Kill (bone-snapping violence aboard an Indian practice) and MaXXXine (bloody mayhem in Nineteen Eighties Los Angeles), and earlier than the summer season is out, we will see Entice (serial killer at a pop live performance), Blink Twice (ladies trapped on a personal island), Communicate No Evil (murderous couple preying on holiday-makers) – and, after all, Longlegs.

In impact, these movies are anti-blockbusters. They don’t seem to be bursting with explosions and CGI, they usually haven’t got sweeping orchestral scores and costly advert campaigns, however they do provide the kind of popcorn-dropping pleasure that’s finest skilled in a cinema surrounded by different individuals. In the event that they’re profitable sufficient, horror motion pictures might turn into the brand new summer season blockbusters, whereas superhero motion pictures turn into the counterprogramming alternate options.

Longlegs is launched in US and UK cinemas on 12 July.