From Psycho to the Possessed: Longlegs and the Terrifying Evolution of Serial Killer Horror

In the dim corridors of FBI case files, a new breed of killer emerges – one where the blade meets the brimstone.

Longlegs, Osgood Perkins’ chilling 2024 opus, arrives not as a mere slasher revival but as a seismic shift in the serial killer subgenre, blending forensic procedural with infernal occultism. This film forces us to confront how the archetype of the human monster has mutated over decades, from psychological realism to supernatural abomination.

  • Tracing the serial killer’s roots from Hitchcock’s shower scene to the satanic codes of Longlegs, revealing a genre in constant metamorphosis.
  • Examining how Longlegs fuses 1970s grit, 1990s intellectualism, and fresh demonic dread to redefine pursuit thrillers.
  • Spotlighting performances, production ingenuity, and cultural resonance that cement Longlegs as a pinnacle of modern horror evolution.

The Hitchcockian Spark: Birth of the Calculating Killer

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho ignited the serial killer flame with Norman Bates, a mild-mannered motel owner whose fractured psyche concealed matricidal horrors. This was no brute-force murderer but a figure of deceptive normalcy, his split personality explored through Anthony Perkins’ twitchy, repressed performance. The film’s voyeuristic gaze and shower murder set a template: killers as products of repression, their crimes intimate and psychologically rooted.

Norman embodied the mid-century fear of the ordinary man unhinged, drawing from real-life Ed Gein, whose crimes inspired both Psycho and later The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hitchcock’s innovation lay in audience identification; we pity and fear Bates simultaneously, a duality that humanised the monster. This psychological foundation permeated early serial thrillers, where motive trumped spectacle.

By the 1970s, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) amplified the archetype into familial depravity. Leatherface’s chainsaw-wielding clan represented rural decay and post-Vietnam alienation, shifting focus from solo intellect to pack predation. The film’s documentary-style grit made killers feel invasively real, influencing a wave where socioeconomic rot birthed monsters.

Slasher Mania: The Proliferation of the Masked Menace

The 1980s exploded with slashers like John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and its imitators, where Michael Myers became the blank-faced embodiment of unstoppable evil. Myers, silent and shape-shifting, stripped the killer of backstory, prioritising relentless pursuit over explanation. This evolution favoured spectacle: elaborate kills, final girls, and suburban settings that turned everyday spaces into slaughterhouses.

Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees (1980 onwards) further devolved the killer into supernatural resilience, rising from watery graves with a machete. Here, the serial killer transcended humanity, becoming mythic. Themes of retribution – parental vengeance, camp sins – added moralistic layers, but the genre prioritised body counts, desensitising audiences to gore while masking deeper societal critiques like sexual liberation backlash.

Yet amid the frenzy, films like Maniac (1980) with Joe Spinell’s sweaty, voyeuristic Frank Zito recaptured raw psychopathology, his mannequin scalping evoking Gein anew. These outliers reminded viewers that slashers stemmed from intimate horrors, not just franchise fodder.

The Cerebral Shift: 1990s Mind Games and Moral Mazes

The decade pivoted to intellectual cat-and-mouse, epitomised by Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Hannibal Lecter, played by Jodie Foster’s pursuer opposite Anthony Hopkins’ cannibal savant, elevated killers to cultured adversaries. Lecter’s quid pro quo dialogues dissected trauma, gender, and power, making horror cerebral. Buffalo Bill’s transphobic skin-suiting layered social commentary, though controversially.

David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) immersed viewers in procedural despair, with Kevin Spacey’s John Doe embodying puritanical wrath. The film’s rain-slicked decay and sin-themed murders critiqued urban moral collapse, its box-in-the-rain twist shattering detective optimism. Fincher’s meticulous framing – fluorescent hellscapes, shadowy pursuits – made killing an art form.

Fincher revisited reality with Zodiac (2007), chronicling the real Zodiac Killer’s taunting ciphers. Jake Gyllenhaal’s obsessive cartoonist mirrored audience fixation, transforming serial killers into cultural obsessions. This true-crime pivot prioritised unsolved agony over resolution, foreshadowing podcast-era fascination.

Longlegs Unleashed: Supernatural Serial Slaughter

Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs (2024) synthesises these threads into occult frenzy. Maika Monroe stars as Lee Harker, a haunted FBI agent decoding murders linked to Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs, a satanic cipher-leaver who infiltrates homes via possessed daughters. The plot unfolds methodically: Harker’s childhood glimpse of the killer, her mother’s (Alicia Witt) coded complicity, and a ritualistic climax blending exorcism with forensics.

Unlike predecessors, Longlegs is overtly demonic; Cage’s porcelain-faced, lisping fiend chants incantations, his crimes powered by a devilish patron. This supernatural infusion harks to 1970s occult like The Exorcist (1973), but grafted onto serial structure. Perkins withholds Longlegs’ full reveal, building dread through typewritten clues and grainy flashbacks, echoing Zodiac’s epistolary terror.

The narrative details Harker’s isolation – her psychic flashes, mother’s sacrificial bargain – humanising the hunt. Key scenes, like the dollhouse code discovery or Longlegs’ sing-song surrender, fuse procedural minutiae with infernal bursts, making every kill a pact.

Cinematographic Nightmares: Visual and Sonic Mastery

Perkins, cinematographer Andres Arochi, crafts a bleached, wintry palette: snow-draped forests, sterile offices, desaturated homes evoking emotional frostbite. Wide-angle distortions warp interiors, symbolising fractured realities, while slow zooms on clues mimic obsessive scrutiny. This mise-en-scène evolves slasher voyeurism into hypnotic unease.

Sound design amplifies: muffled whispers, typewriter clacks, Cage’s warped falsetto pierce silence like needles. National Film Award-winning composer Zoli Ádok’s atonal strings swell into choral dread, contrasting 1980s synth stabs with liturgical menace. These elements render Longlegs a sensory assault, outpacing Fincher’s precision.

Effects and Artifice: Practical Demons in the Digital Age

Longlegs champions practical effects amid CGI dominance. Cage’s prosthetics – elongated features, scarred pallor – evoke early Texas Chain Saw handmade grotesquerie, crafted by Francois Dagenais. Demonic transformations rely on animatronics and squibs, not green screens, grounding supernaturalism in tactile horror. Blood rituals use corn syrup viscosities for lingering realism, while cipher props, handwritten by Perkins, add authenticity.

This retro approach critiques over-reliant digital gore, reminiscent of Tom Savini’s squelching in Dawn of the Dead (1978). The effects heighten intimacy; viewers feel the killer’s presence physically, evolving the subgenre’s visceral punch.

Performances that Pierce the Soul

Monroe’s Harker channels Clarice Starling’s resolve with added clairvoyance, her wide-eyed stoicism cracking in psychic visions. Witt’s Ruth delivers maternal fanaticism, her accent-thick pleas chilling. Yet Cage dominates: his Longlegs slithers from flamboyant drag to guttural possession, a kaleidoscope of horror icons – think Lecter’s smarts meets Myers’ blankness, laced with demonic glee.

Supporting turns, like Blair Under wood’s Agent Carter, add procedural grit, but the ensemble orbits Cage’s tour de force, proving star power elevates evolution.

Legacy’s Long Shadow: Influence and Cultural Echoes

Released amid true-crime saturation – podcasts like My Favorite Murder, series like Mindhunter – Longlegs subverts by supernaturalising the mundane. Its $22 million box office on indie budget signals appetite for hybrid horrors, influencing future blends like occult procedurals. Critiques of faith, femininity, and institutional failure resonate post-#MeToo, positioning it as 2020s zeitgeist.

Production hurdles – Perkins’ script sat for years, secured via Cage’s attachment – mirror indie perseverance, much like Hooper’s raw debut. Censorship dodged overt gore for implication, amplifying terror.

Director in the Spotlight

Osgood Perkins, born 2 September 1974 in Manhattan, New York, emerged from cinematic royalty as the son of iconic actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho) and photographer and Berlin bureau chief for the International Herald Tribune Berry Berenson. Raised amid Hollywood’s glare and European sophistication, Perkins absorbed influences from his father’s Hitchcockian legacy and mother’s artistic eye, fostering a penchant for psychological unease.

His acting youth included roles in Legally Blonde (2001) and Autumn in New York (2000), but directing beckoned. Perkins debuted with The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015, aka February), a slow-burn possession tale starring Emma Roberts and Kiernan Shipka, lauded for atmospheric dread at Toronto Film Festival. It explored isolation and infernal pacts, themes recurring in his oeuvre.

Next, Gretel & Hansel (2020) reimagined the fairy tale as feminist horror with Sophia Lillis, delving into matriarchal witchcraft and coming-of-age terror. Shot in Ireland’s misty wilds, it showcased Perkins’ painterly visuals. Longlegs (2024) marked his breakout, grossing over $100 million worldwide, blending serial killer tropes with Satanism.

Upcoming is Keeper (2025), a home-invasion thriller. Perkins favours slow cinema, drawing from Kubrick, Polanski, and his father. Interviews reveal his process: exhaustive scripts, practical effects, music as character. Married with children, he balances family with genre innovation, cementing his status as horror’s thoughtful provocateur.

Filmography highlights: The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) – Nun-haunted boarding school nightmare; Gretel & Hansel (2020) – Psychedelic woods descent; Longlegs (2024) – Occult FBI manhunt; plus shorts like Radio Silence (2012).

Actor in the Spotlight

Nicolas Cage, born Nicolas Kim Coppola on 7 January 1964 in Long Beach, California, transformed from Coppola nephew (Francis Ford’s kin) to eccentric icon through sheer force. Early life in Beverly Hills bred rebellion; he dropped out of Beverly Hills High, adopting ‘Cage’ from Luke Cage comics to evade nepotism.

Debuting in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Cage exploded with Vampire’s Kiss (1989), his bug-eyed mania prefiguring Longlegs. Nineties versatility shone in Leaving Las Vegas (1995, Oscar for alcoholic descent), Face/Off (1997) dual roles, Adaptation (2002) meta-meltdown.

2000s action veered to National Treasure (2004), Ghost Rider (2007), but indies like Mandy (2018) revived cult status. Longlegs (2024) unleashes his most unhinged: falsetto fiend with prosthetic horror. Awards: Golden Globe, Saturns galore; box office titan with over $10 billion earned.

Personal life turbulent – five marriages, including to Patricia Arquette and Lisa Marie Presley – fuels intensity. A collector of castles, dinosaurs, he’s prolific: 100+ films. Filmography: Raising Arizona (1987) – manic dad; Moonstruck (1987) – lovesick baker; The Rock (1996) – heroics; Con Air (1997) – plane peril; Kick-Ass (2010) – vengeful Color Man; Pig (2021) – poignant loss; The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) – self-parody.

Cage’s range – from tender to terrifying – makes him horror’s ultimate wild card.

Craving more midnight terrors? Dive deeper into NecroTimes’ archives for the screams that linger.

Bibliography

Rockoff, A. (2002) Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978–1986. McFarland & Company.

Clover, C. J. (1992) Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press.

Perkins, O. (2024) ‘Directing the Devil: Osgood Perkins on Longlegs’, Variety, 18 July. Available at: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/osgood-perkins-longlegs-interview-1236087654/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Sharrett, C. (2015) ‘The Idea of the Grotesque and the American Vigilante Film’, Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, Wayne State University Press, pp. 67–89.

Kane, P. (2024) ‘Longlegs Review: A Serial Killer Movie Like No Other’, The Guardian, 20 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/20/longlegs-review (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Fincher, D. (2007) Zodiac director’s commentary. Paramount Pictures DVD.

Newman, K. (1995) ‘Se7en: Anatomy of a Serial Killer Film’, Sight & Sound, vol. 5, no. 11, pp. 22–25.

Cage, N. (2024) ‘Inside Longlegs: Nicolas Cage on Becoming the Killer’, Empire, August issue. Available at: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/nicolas-cage-longlegs-interview/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).