Longlegs’ director on what the horror movie’s viral marketing campaign is hiding
If you’ve seen anything about Longlegs, from its cryptic teasers to its spooky trailer, you probably know it’s an upcoming horror movie about a serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. You also probably don’t know much else.
The trailer has elements that certainly feel recognizable, like a young female FBI agent investigating a notorious serial killer, but there’s an overwhelming sense of unease and mystery that leaves the whole thing feeling just a little bit off, enhancing the creepiness and unfamiliarity. And according to director Oz Perkins, that’s very much by design.
Perkins describes Longlegs as a “pop-punk, nostalgic serial killer movie with a supernatural flavor,” but he didn’t want to throw all that at audiences right away.
“[I] used things like Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Zodiac as kind of primers,” Perkins says. “So the audience sees those clues, or those cues, and says, OK, I understand how this will work.”
But these cinematic touchstones are more like starting points than destinations for Perkins, a veteran horror filmmaker whose past work, like The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel, has proven popular in the world of arthouse horror but never quite broken into the mainstream.
“It’s meant to be easier on an audience to connect with it. So that when it gets funky, and it does get funky, we’ve kind of earned it,” Perkins explains. “It’s more playful at that point. I think in previous movies, I think I’ve gotten a little opaque. [...] Now I want to make something that more people will enjoy, and will give me more latitude to do what I want, so it starts with something more familiar.”
Perkins’ work on the movie started with the character of Longlegs, who had been figuratively lurking in the background and at the edges of some of his previous stories and ideas. He said he knew certain things about the character, but compared it to seeing the back of someone who looks familiar as they leave a convenience store: You’re so positive you know them,
Read more on polygon.com
