SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “Longlegs,” now showing in theaters.
Even before its release, critics and horror fans who saw director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer thriller “Longlegs” hailed it as one of the darkest and most sinister films of recent years. Now that the film is finally in theaters, audiences can experience it for themselves, but it’s safe to say that the horror movie hype is real.
From Nicolas Cage’s performance as a demented serial killer to the dark and perfect ending, “Longlegs” will leave even the most ardent horror fans speechless. The murder mystery is full of twists and turns, and people who go to the theater unaware won’t be able to predict how it will end.
Perkins sat down with Variety to discuss the ending, but those who want to see the film without spoilers should proceed with caution. Are you ready?
In “Longlegs”, it is finally revealed that FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) has a personal connection to Cage’s killer. After this is hinted at in the film’s prologue, Lee later realizes that Longlegs visited her home when she was a child for her birthday, as he does with all of his victims. However, for some reason, she survived.
During his investigation, Lee discovers that Longlegs must have had an accomplice for all of his gruesome murders. But who? After his capture by the FBI, Longlegs tells Lee to talk to his mother Ruth (Alicia Witt). He then brutally smashes his face on the table after his interrogation, killing himself.
Lee goes to her mother’s house to discover the truth: she was Longlegs’ secret partner all along. After Longlegs visited Lee when she was a child, Ruth made a deal with him to protect her daughter. Ruth disguised herself as a nun and visited the families’ homes to drop off mysterious dolls as gifts from the church. Longlegs infused the dolls with supernatural and satanic whispers, which put the family into a brainwashing trance and convinced them to kill each other. Longlegs lived in the Harkers’ basement, and Lee’s doll gave him psychic abilities.
After Ruth destroys Lee’s doll and runs away, Lee identifies her mother’s next target: the home of FBI Agent Carter (Blair Underwood). It is Carter’s daughter’s birthday, but Lee arrives too late. Ruth is already there in the living room with a doll, and the Carter family is brainwashed. Agent Carter kills his wife in the kitchen, and just before he goes after his daughter, Lee shoots his mother and breaks the trance. However, Lee runs out of bullets and the doll is intact. The film ends with an ominous “Hail Satan!” from Longlegs, leaving the fate of the surviving characters uncertain.
Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Where did the character of Longlegs come from? Did you have him in mind and build the film around him, or were you doing a detective story and then created this villain?
The film was built around the character of Longlegs, who had tried to fit into other projects I had worked on. When you’re always writing and generating specs and no one’s paying you or you don’t have any source material, you’re always making up shit. You have a universe of things swirling around you, and you’re trying to extract them and put them in. Longlegs was an entity, this creepy—is he a birthday clown? Is he a puppeteer? Does he take care of stuffed animals? Are they little pianos? You start to wonder about this person who’s coming to see your kid for their birthday and you’re in another room and you don’t know they’re interacting and it’s weird. He’s not kidnapping the kids because we’ve seen that 1,000 times before. He’s sort of talking to them. You’re starting to get curious about this. When I decided to try to make a serial killer procedural that was going to be something different, I needed a villain. Longlegs said, “I’ll do it.” In your idea drawer, one of them says, “Play me in, coach.” And Longlegs walks in.
The word “Longlegs” itself is simply scary, but we don’t understand why it is called that. Where did this name come from?
We writers love words. We love the sound and the look and the shape and the feel of certain words. Yes, it has a daddy paw and a creepy quality to it, but it also feels ’70s to me, almost like a Led Zeppelin song or someone with something groovy on the side of their van. It feels like a vintage word that people wouldn’t use much today. It puts the film in a strange position. You don’t fully understand it. It doesn’t fully fit in, which appeals to me more and creates a curiosity that I think is important.
Your previous film, “The Girl in the Black Coat,” also highlighted Satanism, but this one goes even further. What made you want to tackle it again?
This whole baroque devil worship thing, it’s not that I don’t take it seriously; to me it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s like Halloween, people dress up. It’s just ceremony, pomp, circumstance, music, celebration and weirdness. It’s everything the horror genre wants to be, this exploration of what we don’t understand. It’s really intriguing and appealing. I really tried to make something that would be remarkable and enjoyable, especially for a horror audience. Horror audiences put up with a lot of bad stuff and they take it because they need it; they need the horror fix. But every now and then you want to give them something a little more polished and curated for them.
Longlegs dolls have a supernatural side. Do you have an explanation for how they work?
I think so, but I won’t say. It’s part of the devil’s playfulness. Wouldn’t it be kind of cool if you brought a doll into someone’s house and it drove everyone crazy? It’s kind of funny and weird. It’s almost like saying, “You screwed up and let her in. You didn’t have to sign for it! Just because a nun brings it to you doesn’t mean you have to let her into your house with you.” There’s also this “you made it yourself” vibe, which I think is kind of funny.
We don’t know Ruth’s religion, but it seems to be some form of Christianity. Did you have a specific religion in mind, or did you want the film to be a critique of it?
I’m not religious. I don’t take religion seriously or not seriously. It’s not my place to tell people what they should believe or feel or where they should go to feel safer or guilty or whatever. I find it funny sometimes that people are devout. People are funny, aren’t they? We’re all running around trying to stay afloat. Even Ruth Harker has the last word on this notion of prayers. Prayers? Everybody prays. Everybody in the Middle East prays all the time. And then, using elements of the Bible, it just has great language. The Bible just has crazy, funky language. “A beast rising out of the sea with 10 horns and heads and crowns.” That’s great. Not to be childish, but the Bible has a lot of really fun and silly words that are useful if you’re a writer looking for words.
Was this the ending you always had in mind? Was there a lighter ending to the film?
That’s always the way it ended. The ending was supposed to be tragic. The devil still wins in a small way. One of the fun things about using the devil as a villain is that he’s never really trying to take over the world. The devil always seems to be thinking, “I’m just going to screw this person over, I’m going to destroy this family, I’m going to screw up this kid, I’m going to torment this priest.” He’s never thinking, “I’m going to eat the Vatican.” I never get to that point with the devil. The devil is a little more fun and playful than that. Lee Harker’s story ends with the end of the movie. The last shot she fires is the worst thing that could happen to her.
Killing Longlegs before the end of the film is a really surprising moment. Did you plan on having him stay longer?
We were aware of our references and we wanted to create a pop art piece. We wanted to copy or steal a movement from one of the great serial killer movies, as much as possible. That’s just for “Se7en.” I think Kevin Spacey has three or four scenes, right? He surrenders, he’s in the thing, and then he’s in the car and that’s the end. It’s always there, like we had with Cage too, like there’s a presence of this thing, but once you get to the guy, it’s almost disappointing. Of course, it gets very climactic in “Se7en,” but I like the fact that John Doe surrendered. We wanted to sort of — “copy” is the wrong word — “borrow” is closer to what we were doing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.