Horror cinema stars in theatres with 'Longlegs' and 'The Substance'
Horror-tinged week on the big screen with two highly anticipated films, both capable of shaking and disturbing
3' min read
3' min read
Halloween week, as we know, often rhymes with the horror genre: indeed, this weekend is no exception, in which two of the most eagerly awaited titles among the new releases in theatres belong to this very genre.
We start with 'Longlegs', a film that arrives in Italy after its surprising success at the American box office.
At the centre of the narrative is a young FBI agent, Lee Harker, with little experience but much insight. For this reason she is assigned a particularly complicated case: a serial killer whose actions seem to belong more to the world of the occult than the rational. During her research, Lee discovers that she has a personal connection to the killer, such that she relives traumas from her past.
Playing with the title of "Daddy Long Legs", an epistolary novel that has been brought to the cinema several times, director Oz Perkins signs a decidedly macabre and demonic version, as the remarkable opening demonstrates. Changing formats and relying on a truly disturbing soundtrack, the director immediately throws us into a horror of perturbing tones, through the immediate arrival on the scene of a creepy character who goes to talk to a little girl in a snowy garden.
Mixing references to news events - the Charles Manson gang - and film references (it is hard not to think of 'The Silence of the Lambs'), 'Longlegs' is a solid horror film with demonic overtones, capable of gently shaking one's nerves, without relying on special effects or sly gimmicks, but thinking above all in psychological terms.
