An awkward and nervous FBI lady has ESP and uses it to find a killer, a whole big deal is made about it for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then the filmmaker forgot to incorporate her magical superpowers into the rest of the movie.
She is now on the hunt for a weird Nick Cage character… who was likely handed a script and asked “Hey Mr Cage can you play a complete weirdo?” and Nick did fingerguns, cocked his head and said “Cannn Do!”
Oh but Nick Cage Weirdo is pretty badass. Definite creep factor turned up to 11, even if he was basically just put into screwy makeup and asked to act like Nick Cage. Nick Cage Weirdo is making dolls for Satan, because Satan is really into dolls. Asked NCW “Hey, weird mortal, you seem like a total mess, wanna do me a solid and make me some dolls?” to which NCW bugs out his eyes, points fingerguns and says “Cannn Do!”
The Satan element wasn’t really developed, just kinda dropped in cookie-cutter. “Hey it seems the killer is all about devil worship.” “Oh yeah? Must be Tuesday! Speaking of which, how ’bout tacos for lunch?” They didn’t work too hard to develop the characters either, they were just banking on NCW (plus a fuqtonne of pre-release hype) to carry this thing. Longlegs’ character was pretty cartoony, but so was the “It” clown monster and people liked that guy. We love cartoons!
Satan dolls get delivered to children on their birthdays, but only if their birthday is on the 14th, because of something ESP cop worked out in a Satanic Sudoku puzzle that shit will go down on the birthday, but only if it’s on the 14th, and then the shit may go down a little before the birthday, or sometimes a little after, all depends upon where the Sudoku puzzles line up. I didn’t quite see the relevance of all the puzzles as they didn’t have much relevance to the case, just the other puzzles, the ones that decoded NCW’s Zodiac Killer knockoff letters he wrote people in their birthday cards, something about cutting off Grandma’s boobs. Some basic weird guy stuff, you know how that goes, Carl.
FBI-ESP-COP is now involved in this Satan Nick Cage stuff, repressed childhood memories, probably why her mom is so damned weird every time she calls.
Did I like it? I think so. NCW was super creepy, a number of loud noises and jump scares, and they never explain why NCW looks like that. There’s a whole bunch of T. Rex references and music sprinkled around the movie, too. I really dig T. Rex, too, so it’s got my thumbs-up!