Thanks to Everett Collection
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “Longlegs,” which is in theaters now.
Even before its release, critics and horror fans who saw director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer thriller “Longlegs” were hailing it as one of the darkest, most sinister films in recent memory. Now that the film is finally in theaters, audiences can see it for themselves, but it’s safe to say: the horror hype is real.
From Nicolas Cage’s performance as a deranged serial killer to the perfectly dark ending, “Longlegs” will leave even the most ardent horror fan in stitches. The murder mystery is full of twists and turns, and those going into the film blind will have no way of predicting how it will end.
Perkins sat down with Variety to discuss the ending, but those who want to go into the film unspoiled should proceed with caution. Ready?
Ultimately, it’s revealed in “Longlegs” that FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) has a personal connection to Cage’s killer. After it’s teased in the film’s prologue, Lee later realizes that Longlegs visited her house on her birthday as a child, just as he does for all of his victims. For some reason, however, she survived.
During her investigation, Lee connects the dots that Longlegs must have had an accomplice for all of his gruesome murders. But who? After the FBI captures him, Longlegs tells Lee to talk to her mother Ruth (Alicia Witt). He then brutally slams his face on the table after his interrogation, killing himself.
Lee drives to her mother’s house to discover the truth: she was Longlegs’ secret partner all along. After Longlegs visited Lee as a child, Ruth made a deal with him to protect her daughter. Ruth disguised herself as a nun and visited families’ homes to deliver mysterious dolls as gifts from the church. Longlegs gave the dolls supernatural, satanic whisperings, putting the family into a mind-bending trance and convincing them to kill each other. Longlegs lived in the Harkers’ basement, and Lee’s doll gave her psychic powers.
After Ruth destroys Lee’s doll and escapes, Lee locates her mother’s next target: the home of FBI agent Carter (Blair Underwood). It happens to be Carter’s daughter’s birthday, but Lee is too late. Ruth is already there in the living room with a doll, and the Carter family is brainwashed. Agent Carter murders his wife in the kitchen, and just before he goes after his daughter, Lee shoots her mother, breaking 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 unclear.
Thanks to Everett Collection
Where does the character of Longlegs come from? Did you have him in mind and build the film around him, or were you making a murder mystery and then creating this villain?
It was built around the character of Longlegs, who was a character who had tried to adapt himself to other projects that I had worked on. When you’re writing all the time and generating specs and no one’s paying you or you don’t have source material, you’re making shit up all the time. You end up with this universe of things floating around, and you’re trying to pull them out and put them in. Longlegs was this entity, this poor — is he a birthday clown? Is he a puppeteer? Does he deal with stuffed animals? Are they little pianos? You start wondering about this person who comes to your kid’s birthday party and you’re in the other room and you don’t know that they’re interacting and it’s weird. He’s not kidnapping the kids because we’ve seen that a thousand times before. He’s talking to them a little bit. You get curious about that. When I decided I was going to try a serial killer procedural that was a little bit different, I needed a villain. Longlegs was like, “I’ll do it.” In your idea drawer, one of them says, “Put me in, coach.” And off goes Longlegs.
The word “Longlegs” is creepy enough on its own, but we’re given no reason why he calls himself that. Where did that name come from?
We writers just love words. We love how certain words sound and look and shape and feel. Yes, it has a long-legged, creepy-crawly quality to it, but it also feels 70s to me — almost like a Led Zeppelin song or someone would have on the side of their van, something groovy. It feels like a vintage word that people wouldn’t use much these days. It put the movie in a weird place. You get the chance to not quite understand it. It doesn’t quite fit, which is more appealing to me and creates a curiosity that I think is important.
Your previous film, “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” also featured Satanism, but this film takes it to the next level. What made you want to tackle that again?
All this baroque devil worship, it’s not that I don’t take it seriously; to me it’s window dressing. It’s like Halloween, people dressing up. It’s just ceremony and pageantry and music and party and weirdness. It’s everything the horror genre wants to be, this exploration of what we don’t understand. That’s really intriguing and appealing. I really just tried to make something that stands out and is fun, 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 their horror fix. But every once in a while you want to give them something that’s a little bit more polished and curated for them.
The Longlegs puppets have a supernatural element to them. Do you have an explanation for how they actually work?
I do, but I won’t say it. It’s part of the devil’s playfulness. Wouldn’t it be great if you brought a doll into someone’s house and everyone went crazy over it? That’s kind of funny and weird. It’s almost like, “You fucked up and let him in. You didn’t have to sign for it! Just because a nun brought it to you doesn’t mean you have to let her in with it.” There’s also this thing called, “You did it to yourself,” which I think is kind of funny.
We don’t find out what Ruth’s religion is, but it seems to be some form of Christianity. Did you have a specific religion in mind, or was the film meant to be a critique of that?
I’m not religious. I don’t take religion seriously or not seriously; it’s not my place to tell people what to believe or feel or where to go to feel safer or guilty or whatever they need. I just find it funny sometimes that people are religious. People are funny, aren’t they? We’re all running around doing our thing to stay afloat. Even Ruth Harker has the last laugh at this idea of prayers. Like, prayers? Everybody prays. Everybody in the Middle East prays all the fucking time. And then using things from the Bible, it’s just got good language. The Bible just has some really funky, fucking crazy language. “A beast rising out of the sea having 10 horns and heads and crowns.” It’s great. Not to be childish, but the Bible has a lot of really fun, crazy wording that’s useful if you’re a writer who’s just looking for words.
Was that always the ending you had in mind? Was there ever a lighter ending for the film?
That was always the ending. The ending was meant to be tragic. The devil wins again in a small way. One of the fun things about using the devil as your villain is that the devil never really goes for world domination. The devil is always thinking, “I’m just going to mess with this person, I’m going to ruin this family, I’m going to ruin this child, I’m going to torment this priest.” It’s never like, “I’m going to eat the Vatican.” It never gets to that point for me with the devil. The devil is a little funnier and more playful than that. Lee Harker’s story ends with the end of the film. The last shot she fires is the worst thing that can happen to her.
Killing Longlegs before the end of the movie is such a surprising moment. Did you ever plan on having him stick around longer?
We were aware of our references and we wanted to do a pop art piece. In the way that we could often copy or steal a move from one of the great serial killer movies, we wanted to do that. That’s just “Se7en.” I think Kevin Spacey has three or four scenes, right? He turns himself in, he’s in the thing and then he’s in the car and that’s the end. He’s always there, which we had with Cage, like there’s a presence of this thing, but once you get to the guy, it’s almost anticlimactic. Of course, he gets very climactic in “Se7en,” but I love that John Doe turned himself in. We wanted to kind of — “fake” isn’t the right word — “borrow” is closer to what we did.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.