The scariest movie of the year: ‘Long Legs’: Murders, disturbing truths and a disturbing Nicolas Cage

“When I was writing it, I wanted it to have obvious superficial similarities to ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991), to immediately immerse the viewer in the story it was telling, because it would have been easier for me to be in that position,” Perkins explains to El Periódico about the narrative strategy of his fourth feature. “As they say, when you let a vampire into your house, you’re letting him do whatever he wants with you; my film is like a vampire for the viewer.”

In fact, in its shortest version, The plot of ‘Long Legs’ is directly linked to Jonathan Demme’s classic.She plays a novice FBI agent, played wonderfully by Maika Monroe, who takes on the investigation of a series of murders and in the process is forced to confront the horrors of her own past. “But like I said, that’s just the starting point. I like to think of the movie as a work of Pop Art because it’s a compilation of all our favorite ingredients of the genre. It’s got dolls, it’s got axe murderers, it’s got Satan himself, it’s got a memorable villain, it’s got coded messages, it’s got biblical allusions, it’s got goddamned nuns, it’s got gunplay… it’s got it all.”

Complicated relationships

But beyond all that, adds the director, “Long Legs” is above all about the very complex relationships between parents and children, and especially the decisions that parents make to keep their children away from uncomfortable truths. “I have three children and these are topics that I have been thinking about for a long time,” admits the director, whose own family history is one that leaves an indelible mark. Her parents are actor Anthony Perkins, who became a horror movie icon. After playing the murderer Norman Bates and the model Berry Berenson in ‘Psycho’ (1960); he died of AIDS after living in secret of his homosexuality all his life and he himself died in one of the hijacked planes on September 11.

As a director, all of his films — “The Evil Cent” (2015), “I Am the Beautiful Creature Who Lives in This House” (2016) and “Gretel and Hansel” (2020) are the other three — have placed less emphasis on the sins of the elder or the sins of the mother. “I decided from the beginning to dedicate myself to telling stories that represented me in some way or another,” he says. As for “Long Legs,” he adds, “it talks about the lies our parents tell us to protect us and the damage that can do to us. My father was gay, and it was an open secret both in the film industry and in the industry.” But it wasn’t talked about in my family, and that affected me deeply.

In fact, it’s tempting to look for similarities to Norman Bates’ appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, dressed as his own mother. and what features Cage gives the character of ‘Long Legs’, a twisted being dedicated to destroying the family“He’s never been through such a radical transformation before, and it’s really remarkable considering the number of films he’s left behind,” Perkins says. “He admitted that he was inspired to embody this character by the experience of his own mother, who suffered from mental illness throughout her life. For me, I designed Longlegs as a strange combination of clown and rocker,” he adds.

“On the one hand, I thought of the often slightly annoying guys we hired to perform at our son’s birthday party and who we perhaps didn’t pay as much attention to as we should have; on the other hand, I imagined him like this: someone whose dream was to be the guitarist in a ‘glam-rock’ band, until one day, while listening to Judas Priest, he heard Satan commanding him to be his servant.

Did Perkins himself ever receive instructions from the evil one? Why do you insist on including this in your films? “It’s very simple: Satan is attractive, sexy, perverted, funny and very smart; he is an irresistible being. However, I have no interest in religion.”

Time will tell what impact ‘Longlegs’ will have on his career, he’s already almost two movies more. Both are horror movies of courseThe director admits: “I don’t know if I’ll ever abandon this genre, but it’s very possible that I won’t.” “Horror cinema gives me free reign to use my imagination without limits, to fantasize about everything we don’t know, can’t see, can understand, and therefore to use all kinds of feelings, shapes, emotions. colors, legends, creatures. This is the land of infinite possibilities.”