After hiding his face for much of the marketing campaign, audiences are leaving theaters terrified by Nicolas Cage's appearance in the recently released horror hit Longlegs.
Directed by visionary filmmaker Oz Perkins, Longlegs debuted as one of the best-reviewed movies of the year (sitting at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes). It tells the terrifying tale of a young female FBI agent who opens a cold case of serial killings from decades ago.
In her investigation of the blood-curdling murders, she uncovers the work of a vile killer played by Nicolas Cage and realizes that he may strike again.
Why Does Nicolas Cage Look like That in Longlegs?
Audiences have been puzzled and horrified to discover what Nicolas Cage's character looks like in Neon's horror film Longlegs.
Cage's serial killer character serves as the movie's namesake and has only been teased in marketing, strategically hiding his full looks with small glimpses of his stark-white skin and long blonde hair.
However, after watching the movie, fans realize that the Oscar-winning actor is almost unrecognizable, sporting a deformed pale face and terrifying long prosthetic fingers.
This measured approach in showing just bits and pieces of the character makes his reveal all the more haunting, leaving that first full look at him sticking in the viewer's head long after they leave the theater.
Even in the movie, full glimpses at Cage's disgustingly vile villain come sparsely, making the audience fill in many blanks.
According to director Oz Perkins, this look was something Cage asked for himself. He wanted to "[bury] himself" in the role unlike he ever had, according to the filmmaker (via GamesRadar):
"Early on in the development, Nic was really enthusiastic about burying himself. Which I thought was awesome, because I don't think he's ever done that before."
Perkins remarked that in the script, the movie's big bad had always been described as someone who was "ruined by living the life that he's had to live," which eventually sent the filmmaker down the path of this look a botched plastic surgery:
"In the script, he's referred to as someone who's been ruined, ruined by life, ruined by living the life that he's had to live. A good shortcut into that for me wound up being, like, when you see someone who's had plastic surgery and you're like, 'Wow, you really fucked that up, didn't you? Your whole thing? Everything that was you is now fucking ruined.' So that was elemental, that was the shorthand."
Cage himself said he took inspiration for his character's white skin from a memory from his childhood.
The Longlegs actor told Entertainment Weekly he remembers walking into the bathroom when he was two years old and seeing "[his] mom put on Noxzema cold cream," and the creamy white plaster on her face petrified him:
"My mom put on Noxzema cold cream. I was 2 years old, and I opened the bathroom door [to see] what she was doing. For no reason, she turned her face really fast and stared at me after [putting on] the cold cream. The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me."
This resulted in the horrific look that ended up on screen. Cage's makeup and performance were so shocking that the movie even made marketing out of various cast and crew seeing him for the first time.
His co-star in the film, Maika Monroe (who plays FBI agent Lee Harker), notably had a heartbeat of 170 beats per minute when she saw Cage in his full Longlegs makeup for the first time - which they turned into a promo for the film. This was such an elevated heart rate that the microphone she was wearing started to pick up the beats (per Variety).
Cage's Longlegs killer assumedly looks the way he does because of the road he has gone down with his killings and attachment to the occult.
The murders at the center of the film puzzle authorities because it is never just one person dying at a time. Instead, entire families seem to die all at once, making one wonder how exactly a single killer could accomplish such a feat.
As Monroe's federal detective begins to uncover the nature of the Longlegs murders, she learns Cage's killer is a lot more than the typical career criminal. In fact, he seems to have some sort of connection to Satanism, using an attachment to the Devil to kill his victims.
With such a deep devotion to something so worthy of making one's skin crawl, it would make sense that his offputting appearance would be meant to reflect that.
Longlegs is playing in theaters worldwide.
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