LONGLEGS (2024)

I haven’t seen many Small Wonder / THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS crossovers, but of the ones I have seen LONGLEGS is the weakest. Also, I don’t even believe in Satan and even I’m offended at how weak this Satanic turkey is.

Full-time Victoria "Vicki" Ann Smith-Lawson cosplayer and newly recruited FBI agent Lee Harker fails miserably at her first assignment, so she’s put on the cold-case of a serial killer by the name of Longlegs. (No relation to the Long-Legged Mack Daddy.) Within a few hours she has somehow figured out all kinds of clues that has baffled the FBI for decades. Gee, wonder how that could be?! Durr. Anyway, more amazing coincidences happen over and over six hundred and threescore and six more times and before you can say “The Holy Spirit is a dork.” Harper Lee, I mean, Lee Harker is neck deep in trouble.

Whoever made the trailer for this film should be given 66.6% of the box office because it was really fun and it fooled my dumbass into thinking it was going to be a mean-spirited creepfest, but nope. I sat my chiseled buns down in my normal seat at the theater and within 10 minutes I was already rolling my handsome eyeballs at how ridiculous the story was. If somebody can’t figure out the ending of this movie within the first few minutes, then you got a problem. Also, is there some sort of light bulb wattage regulations in this universe? Why is nearly every light bulb in the film barely stronger than a single candle? Ewwwhhh! I heard a suspicious sound late at night outside my secluded forest home. Let me turn on my outside spotlight. Flips switch and the bulb has the illumination power of 37 lightning bugs in a dusty jar.

I have many more thoughts about LONGLEGS (for example: why does Nicholas Cage look like a bloated Marilyn Manson dressed up as the Easter Bunny from CRITTERS 2?), but nobody besides me reads this shit so what is the point. I’ll update this review with screenshots and other stuff when the film comes out on home media and I watch it a few more times. And yes, I’ll even crawl through it frame-by-frame to capture all the creepiest stuff...so IMDb can put my screenshots on their site and put ads on them. Whoops! Did I type that out loud?

[Update 10/06/2024: Added screenshots. Have fun IMDb.]

CRAWL (2019)

Moron dad ignores warnings to evacuate ahead of a Category 5 hurricane. Moron daughter goes off in search of her moron dad. Good news is she finds him. Bad news is he’s injured and trapped in the crawl space beneath his crib with multiple large ill-tempered alligators. All with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

The most surprising thing about CRAWL is it isn’t surprising at all. I usually enjoy killer animal movies and I love disaster movies, so I mistakenly thought that if you combine those two things with the director of the gnarly HIGH TENSION, that CRAWL would be an awesome bloodbath of alligators ripping people to shreds. Flinging intestines and bloody limbs into the air with gleeful abandon. Nope. The cinematography by Maxime Alexandre looks nice, but, outside of that, CRAWL is strictly by-the-numbers. Quick set-up of character backstories, put characters in dangerous situation, have characters scamper around as various side characters run up the low body count, have main characters learn lessons about family.

I remember seeing CRAWL in the theater and being mildly entertained, but disappointed by the final act. I had hoped that once it was released on home media that it would get a longer cut with added brutal violence, but that didn’t happen. It’s just the same old movie. Zero nudity, very little blood, forgettable looking sets that look like sets, unimaginative script, boring cast, disappointing ending.

Overall, CRAWL is watchable and mildly entertaining. I did like the dog though. She was super cute. I loved when she was swimming. Those back legs were kicking! They should make an alien invasion movie, but just make it about the dog from CRAWL and the cat from that boring ass A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE.  (Literally, the best minutes of that movie are when the cat ran off by itself.) No human main characters at all, just a cat and a dog’s journey across a Robert McCammon-style post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then they both die at the end.

After many harrowing adventures together, our two heroes are on the side of a hill that overlooks a large dead city. The sky is grey and the clouds low. The cat and dog walk together in silence, breathing out ghosts in the bitter cold. The dog misjudges a step and breaks one of his back legs on a loose rock. Before the dog even falls to the ground, the cat knows that they are doomed. Still, she does what she can to comfort her best friend. She brings him a small mouse to eat and nuzzles him. Then, as night settles and the deeper cold moves in, she cuddles up to him to keep him as warm as her little body can. He dies in the night. She feels his body cool next to her. In the morning, she knows that she is healthy enough to move on. But, she also knows that life is not worth living when one is truly alone.