Can’t wait to see Nicolas Cage in all his glory as the eponymous serial killer in Osgood Perkins’ film “Longlegs”? Join the club.
Much has been made of distributor Neon’s clever choice to hide the villain of Perkins’ latest film throughout its marketing campaign. That mystique was already in place long before a single trailer was cut. Hell, even Cage’s co-star Maika Monroe, who plays the FBI agent on the trail of the satanic serial killer, didn’t “meet” Longlegs until Cage’s last day of filming.
“Oz wanted to keep us completely separate,” Monroe told IndieWire in a recent interview. “No one showed me any pictures of him. Oz wanted it to be a complete surprise for that scene where we first interact. Imagine. It was completely shocking and overwhelming. The first time I met him, the cameras were rolling and they called for action. I opened the door and there he was.”
In the film, genre stars Monroe and Cage go head-to-head after Longlegs’ decades-long reign of terror in the seemingly safe suburbs of the Pacific Northwest prompts the FBI to try something a little different to catch their unknown villain. Longlegs never sets foot in the homes of the families he’s responsible for wiping out, and with that lack of evidence (and all the questions it inspires) hanging over a string of murders that shows no sign of stopping, young agent Lee Harker (Monroe) and her apparent psychic gifts are put to the test.
When the couple finally meets face to face for the first time (or East (this?) In Perkins’s queasy, suffocating film, they are both well aware of each other’s existence. But nothing can prepare the audience – or Harker, already shaken and intensely internal – for the utter panic caused by Cage’s Longlegs costume.
“It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy!” she said. “As you know, he completely transformed. There’s no trace of Nic in there, not in his voice, not in his mannerisms. He was very Method in there. So it was in character, and he’s a very disturbing character, to say the least.”
Monroe is a fan of Cage’s choice to hide his entire face. It worked on her, didn’t it?
“I think it’s a great way to make this movie,” Monroe said. “I think there’s so much in the media today that I watch a trailer and I’m like, ‘Oh, I know what this movie’s about.’ It’s really great what they did with this. It’s like another extension of the movie.”
And, rest assured, Monroe and Cage found time to bond.
“It was really cute,” she said. “We shot that scene and it was his last day, so we finished shooting and then we had to take some pictures at the end. So the photographer came in and we were sitting across from each other and he said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m a really big fan of yours,’” in Nic’s voice. “I was like, ‘What is going on? Am I dreaming right now? What is going on?’ … It was a very surreal day for me.”
Monroe said Cage even called her film “It Follows,” which is getting a sequel from director David Robert Mitchell, “one of his favorite movies.” She added that Cage’s compliment included the Oscar winner saying it was “so amazing to work with.” She laughed, recalling the moment: “And I was like, ‘I’m giving it back to you, buddy!’”
Unlike Cage, Monroe has said she doesn’t typically stay in character during a shoot. “I go back to Maika,” she said, when asked to “cut.” “You can’t necessarily get away from it, but I’m definitely not a Method actor. It’s just not for me. I have a huge respect for that. I think it’s amazing, and I think certain roles, in particular, you have to do that. I think for Nic, you have to kind of stay in that space. There’s no part of Nic that exists in that character, but I think for me, just for mental health reasons, it’s just nice to be able to step out of that world.”
Monroe, however, was eager to enter Perkins’ world for Longlegs. “When I first read that script, I was so obsessed with that world,” Monroe said. “I haven’t had such a visceral reaction to a script in a long time. It was one of those projects where I was like, ‘I can’t do this.'” need to do this.'”
“It was crazy reading the script, because the first 30, 40 pages, I was like, ‘Oh, I know where this is going,’ and then there are so many great twists at the end,” Monroe said. “You’re like, ‘Wait, waitI have to go back and reread it.” And then you realize, you’re like, “Ah, now this all makes sense.”
The actress first met Perkins at a coffee shop, a meeting in which the filmmaker outlined every inch of his vision for the film, including, yes, what Longlegs would look like. “I wanted this role so badly. I wanted it SO “It’s bad,” Monroe said. “After the meeting, when I talked to my team, I was like, ‘He’s so amazing. I feel like we’ve agreed on this.’ And my team was like, ‘He loved you, but he just doesn’t think you’re the right person for this role.’”
The only question on her mind was: “What should I do?” Monroe and her team chose to tape a selection of scenes themselves – one with Blair Underwood’s character, an FBI agent in Lee’s analysis of the case, another with Alicia Witt as Lee’s mother – and rushed them to Perkins. She got the job.
“It’s my job, I’m an actress, and if you know me, (and you do this) role, it’s very different from who I am, but I just wanted to prove myself and prove to him that I could do it,” she said. “Some of my favorite roles are the ones where there’s very little dialogue. There’s a lot that can be conveyed through the eyes, through emotion, and I think that’s also a challenge. Reading that and understanding where Lee comes from, her childhood, the trauma and the family relationships, there’s so much in there, and I think it’s very common for people to repress and push a lot of things away. I just thought it would be really interesting to play with all those different layers of this character.”
Early previews of the film have already drawn comparisons to other crime thrillers, including the Jodie Foster classic “The Silence of the Lambs,” in which scream queen Monroe tried her hand at her own version of Clarice Starling. It was certainly appealing to the star of “The Guest” and “Watcher,” who has long dabbled in horror films of all stripes.
“I love love, love “I think it’s an incredible genre. I grew up loving Zodiac, Memento and The Silence of the Lambs, it’s one of the most incredible films. What I love about a film, and what Longlegs has, is that when you get to the end, it’s like, ‘Wait, I want to go back and figure it out.’ There are all these little secrets, all these little hidden moments, and it takes a brilliant filmmaker to do that, which Oz did exceptionally well.”
As for her other creepy partners, Monroe is also quite fond of them, especially the large dolls that Longlegs makes as part of his nefarious plans, which often seem as strange and evil as their sick creator.
“The first doll I met was the first one in the movie, and I think it’s one of the most disturbing,” Monroe said, acknowledging that they are “quite large” and designed to “make you feel uncomfortable.”
Remembering these dolls, these characters who played a supporting role, Monroe shuddered a little but seemed eager to get back to the message: Here is something the audience can discover at their own pace. “They are just incredibly disturbing,” she said. “I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll leave it there.”
Neon will release “Longlegs” in theaters on Friday, July 12.