Longlegs: Just watched it, incredibly disappointed.
Not much to it really. The "mystery" didn't develop much, there wasn't a sense of suspense, the "mystery solving" sequences didn't solve much, the acting wasn't good, there wasn't any sense of evil on the satanism.
Really blah. A waste of time for real horror fans, IMHO.
That's wild. I really enjoyed it and recently rewatched it looking for all the shadow appearances of the devil and other clues sprinkled throughout. The ARG and trailers leading to release were fantastic imo as well.
That said, absolutely respect your opinion on it. I think its another movie like Hereditary that may be a victim of its own hype train after the initial buzz wears off.
Sometimes horror movies hit hard with the preview and opening audiences then get shredded by the 2nd wave of viewers. I try to track this mentally and look for films that find that 3rd wave of appreciation once we're 10 or so years away from the initial hype. Been seeing that happen a lot with the mid-late 90's post scream movies lately. Stuff that was considered utter drek then is being viewed as special now that were a few decades away.
I mostly agree with you, except I think Nicolas Cage gave it his all and was creepily interesting. It's a shame they didn't put his role in a better film.