“The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.”

Everything in “Longlegs” feels very deliberately crafted and chosen by the undeniably talented writer/director of “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.” From the consistently low camera angles that enhance tension by giving us a reduced POV to the quick bursts of imagery and sound that feel nearly subliminal to possibly even the names of the characters. Without spoiling anything, Lee has a connection to the very vampiric Longlegs that made me wonder if Harker was a Bram Stoker’s Dracula reference (pretty sure it is). And is it a coincidence that the only survivor’s surname is Camera (played by Kiernan Shipka, in an impressive single-scene performance)? After all, it’s Lee’s camera, and, by extension, Perkins’ camera that keeps the story alive.

This kind of mental unpacking of a film can be fun and will almost certainly lead to hours of TikToks and YouTube videos drawing connections like the paragraph above. But it’s hard for a film to be calibrated this carefully and feel as unhinged as this story should at the same time. There’s a version of “Longlegs” that hides its strings better, one that doesn’t feel the need to explain everything away with an insanely long exposition-dump monologue. "Longlegs" has one that is so misguided, not only because nightmares are better with a few lingering questions, but because the scenes that follow basically serve the same purpose through plotting. This is a movie with a haunted doll, psychic FBI agent, and a serial killer with a connection to Satan. We don’t need to connect all the dots.