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"Longlegs," a combination supernatural thriller and gritty police procedural by writer-director Oz Perkins, mines elements from a host of well-known films, among them David Fincher's "Zodiac" (there's a sinister code) and "Se7en" (sinister boxes), and the pictures that make up the "Conjuring" universe (sinister dolls). But the movie's primary inspiration, as Perkins frankly acknowledges, is "The Silence of the Lambs," the 1991 masterwork by the late Jonathan Demme. "Lambs" is a movie so close to perfect that you have to wonder why anyone would risk universal disdain by aping it. (Ask Gus Van Sant about the furious blowback triggered by his 1998 "Psycho" remake.) Perkins isn't trying to rip Demme off, exactly; "Longlegs" is an earnest attempt to make a quality fright flick. And it has its moments. But despite the wave of early reviews proclaiming it the scariest picture of the year (already) or maybe the decade (guess we'll see), the movie doesn't entirely work. And it's not quite as scary as its enthusiasts contend.

The protagonist of the story, which is set in 1990s Oregon, is a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, minimally expressive in the role). Lee is clearly modeled on Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs." In that movie, Clarice became entangled with a sadistic serial killer called Buffalo Bill. Lee Harker has also drawn the attention of a serial killer, a homicidal maniac who calls himself Longlegs. (Didn't catch the reason why he does that.) But this fellow's M.O. is more complex than Bill's. First of all, he slaughters whole families -- but only ones with daughters born on the 14th of whatever month Longlegs has chosen for one of his murderous sorties. He has been carrying out these killings for 30 years, and police have never found any trace of another person at the crime scenes -- it always looks like the father of the family did the wet work, and then offed himself.

The director has a talent for stirring unease. In one nighttime shot, we see Lee standing in the dark in front of her house, which is out in the woods. The building's interior lights are on, and as we watch, we suddenly realize there's somebody moving around in there. It's an unusually creepy effect. And Perkins has scattered nice production touches throughout the film. The sallow lighting and wide-angle lens distortions impart a dismal period authenticity, and the movie's soundtrack all but writhes with bumps, thumps, and howls. It's not a very gory film, but a closeup on a corpse face crawling with flies and maggots helps make up for that. More oddly, the old Brit glam band T. Rex gets a lot of love in this movie: Their 1971 hit "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" kicks off the picture, for some reason, and then later, when we get a glimpse of the killer's apartment, there's a poster of the group's leader, Marc Bolan, pasted up on a wall.

The picture goes a little wobbly as it leans into its occult trappings. First we learn that Lee is psychic -- she can tell which building a malefactor is hiding in just by standing in its vicinity. This supernatural element creates a problem, I think. In "The Silence of the Lambs," the villain was the charming monster Hannibal Lecter, incarnated for the ages by the great Anthony Hopkins. His Lecter was such an enjoyable character because, as unhinged as we knew him to be, he was also completely human (and of course completely insane). The killer Longlegs is something else. First we're told he's a Satanist; eventually, though, it comes to seem that this man is Satan himself. (Which made me wonder, during one spooky road scene, why the Prince of Darkness would be driving a station wagon -- give us Maserati Satan or go home.)

Although she wouldn't seem to be much of a people person, Lee turns out to have a dark history with Longlegs, as does her Bible-fondling mom, Ruth (Alicia Witt). This is an especially alarming revelation because Longlegs is played by Nicolas Cage, chewing up whole acres of scenery in a performance that is either brilliant (that word has been wheeled out already) or, more accurately, ridiculous. Cage churned out a number of enjoyably awful movies while the IRS was on his case for about twelve years in the early 2000s. But however mock-entertaining those films were, they left him with some unfortunate creative tics -- chiefly, the deployment of bellowing, crazy-face freakouts ("Not the bees!") that, by now, are a betrayal of his real gifts. (In "Mandy," one of the best of his late-career pictures, the director, Panos Cosmatos, felt compelled to put Cage into a small bathroom with a bottle of booze and have him do nothing but scream and huff and wail. It was a very sad sight.) In "Longlegs," Nic has been encouraged to pull on a ratty blond wig over a face full of powder and lipstick and revert to the screeching and babbling he was encouraged to deliver in his bad old days. It's very sad all over again.

To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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