The 21st-century scream queen has one of her best roles yet in Longlegs.
Before Jenna Ortega and Scream, before Mia Goth and Pearl, and before the young cast of Yellowjackets became our cannibal darlings, Maika Monroe arrived to put her own indelible stamp on 21st-century horror. For the past decade, Monroe has established herself as a mainstay in the horror genre, not just a dependable player but a true modern scream queen who’s able to elevate predictable fare, stand toe-to-toe with monsters of all kinds, and, of course, lead modern classics to even greater heights.
Now, with her nerve-shredding performance in Oz Perkins’s serial-killer terrifier Longlegs, Monroe is on the verge of a kind of second breakthrough in her horror career, a chance to remind audiences that she’s not just still here but still arguably the best young actress in the genre at the moment. In celebration of that new breakthrough, and of Monroe’s tireless talents, here are all of her horror films so far, ranked from worst to best.
Tau (2018)
One of Monroe’s great gifts, and a hallmark of good horror acting in general, is her ability to maintain the compelling edge in a scene without another human partner, something she achieves brilliantly in other films we’ll get to later. It’s a gift that’s a tremendous asset in a film like Tau, in which she plays a woman kidnapped by a mad scientist (Ed Skrein) to help him develop an advanced AI (voiced by Gary Oldman) he’s trying to perfect. For huge swaths of the film, Monroe is left alone in a vast, cold house with nothing but the voice of the AI to keep her company, which means the film’s humanity rests squarely on her shoulders. The attempt to balance out claustrophobic horror with high-concept sci-fi doesn’t quite work, and it all goes pretty much exactly how you’d expect, but because it has Monroe at the center, Tau retains a watchability and a surprisingly steady emotional core.
Greta (2018)
Monroe takes a supporting role in Greta, Neil Jordan’s psychological horror film about a young woman (Chloë Grace Moretz) who befriends a mysterious older woman (Isabelle Huppert in the title role) and soon finds she’s accidentally bonded with a monster. As Moretz’s roommate, the lively and bold Erica, Monroe disappears from the film for significant stretches, but Jordan is smart enough to keep her an active participant in the plot, and she eventually becomes the star of the film’s two best scenes. One is a fantastically tense stalker-y chase sequence, the other is a showdown with Huppert; Monroe gets to flex her Final Girl muscles in both scenes to great effect, helping Greta land its most frightening moments.
Villains (2019)
A blackly comic crime film with a horror movie’s soul, Villains pairs Monroe with Bill Skarsgård as they play a couple of small-time crooks trying to raise enough money to live their dream lives in Florida. When their car breaks down, they stumble upon a house in the woods, and a strange couple (Jeffrey Donovan and Kyra Sedgwick) hiding a dark secret. What follows is a strange, violent, twisty game of predator and prey that’s both tension-laden and deeply satisfying. A big part of that satisfaction, unsurprisingly, is the chemistry between Skarsgård and Monroe, who are able to pivot from the film’s comic tones to its horrific developments with ease and grace. It’s arguably the funniest film on this list, but that doesn’t stop it from being truly frightening.
Significant Other (2022)
There’s a very delicate tonal dance at work in Significant Other, which stars Monroe as a woman who’s reluctantly going out to hike and camp with her boyfriend (Jake Lacy), only to find something she never expected out in the woods. Humor, paranoia, and heart front-load the narrative, and when the real sci-fi/horror elements start to kick in, you think you know where it’s going, right up until you don’t. The twist in Significant Other is quite effective, but it’s what happens next that makes the film a hidden gem from the 2022 horror scene, and Monroe and Lacy both navigate the film’s gleeful strangeness wonderfully.
Watcher (2022)
This is the point where the list starts to shift from Good Genre Movies into the realm of Potential Masterpieces. In Watcher, Chloe Okuno’s stylish and nail-biting directorial debut, Monroe stars as a lonely woman who moves to Bucharest with her husband (Karl Glusman) and, while he’s at work, starts to worry that someone in the apartment across the street is watching her. It’s the stuff of classic paranoid-thriller filmmaking, clearly following in the footsteps of Hitchcock and De Palma. But what makes Watcher particularly special is just how squarely Okuno keeps the focus on a woman who must persist despite no one listening to her and how well Monroe does in that environment. It’s one of those performances she has to very often sell on her own, in a room, reacting not to a scene partner but to a certain environmental edge, and she not only nails it but makes us feel the same sense of creeping anxiety, too.
The Guest (2014)
Monroe’s breakthrough as a genre-cinema mainstay came in 2014 thanks to two films. One offered a leading role, which we’ll get to in just a moment, and the other saw her land second billing under Dan Stevens’s incredible title-role performance in The Guest. Helmed by the You’re Next team of director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett, The Guest emerges as a seemingly straightforward thriller about a military man (Stevens) who visits the family of a departed comrade and forms a strange bond with their teenage daughter (Monroe) and bullied young son (Brendan Meyer). One of the film’s great strengths is how it’s able to warp from this thriller perspective into full-on slasher-style terror by the end, and that’s not just thanks to Stevens. Monroe has to slowly tilt from being beguiled and intrigued by Stevens to totally terrified by him, and her ability to pull it off while explosions and gun battles are going on around her sells the film’s tonal shifts perfectly.
Longlegs (2024)
In this combination of procedural thriller and Satanic nightmare from horror filmmaker Oz Perkins, Monroe stars as Lee Harker, an FBI agent trying to track down the title serial killer (Nicolas Cage) even as he closes in on her as the object of his latest fascinations. Monroe plays Lee with a certain steadfast restraint, keeping her emotions shielded until the film’s terrifying plot strips that shield away bit by bit, and Cage is … well, he’s unhinged in all the best ways. It’s one of those movies that feels eerie and shrouded in strangeness from the very beginning, and Monroe knows exactly how to navigate that environment.
It Follows (2014)
The other major 2014 film (though it didn’t hit U.S. theaters until 2015) that cemented Monroe’s status as a genre star, It Follows has since become not just a hit horror film but a cultural mainstay, up there with The Babadook and Get Out as one of the most talked-about genre movies of its decade. Monroe stars as Jay, a young woman who finds herself cursed after a one-night stand to be followed by a strange entity that will kill her if it can ever catch her. Conceptually, it’s a brilliant piece of horror work from director David Robert Mitchell, but it’s Monroe who has to navigate the harrowing emotional journey of the piece, as Jay goes from unwitting participant to desperate prey to unforgettable Final Girl. It’s a fantastic performance in one of the best horror films of the 21st century so far, one that cemented Monroe as one of the genre’s brightest and most compelling performers.
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