Osgood Perkins
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Connections, in both directions
The deaths rival Final Destination in creative gore, the blood spatter is plentiful…
Influences from King’s other work, 2020s “elevated horror,” and even a little Final Destination allow The Monkey to spread its black comedy wings…
Think “Final Destination,” minus the monkey, and you’ll get the idea.
This opening sequence perfectly sets up the tone of the movie: this is FINAL DESTINATION dialed up to WTAF with a hefty dose of midnight-black humour and some gorgeous visual poetry to pore over for good measure.
Speaking as a sicko who loves convoluted death scenes, getting this the same year as a new Final Destination film is heavenly.
Think Final Destination meets Re-Animator, with a splash of Drag Me to Hell thrown in for good measure.
Osgood Perkins further evolves the dark aesthetic of his previous features, and while his script will quickly draw comparisons to The Silence Of The Lambs (with a bit of a push provided by the period setting), the narrative is matched it with a green, brown, and grey-heavy pallet reminiscent of David Fincher’s work and evokes connections to Zodiac and the series Mindhunter.
Her boss (Blair Underwood) tasks her with decoding a series of the fugitive’s cryptic messages left at the scenes of grisly murder-suicides in Pacific Northwest family homes. These ominous notes recall the crime scene leave-behind notes of David Fincher’s 1995 breakout Se7en, and they contain written ciphers that also harken back to Fincher’s later Zodiac. “I’m telling you,” a skeptical fellow agent speculates about Lee’s acumen, “she’s not ready for this.”
Scenes and themes feel lifted in spirit from bigger, meatier thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Zodiac (2007) — it’s the 90s, and Lee is surrounded by taller male agents, and one early sequence sees her moving with a near-panicked intensity through a killer’s lair.
Although the presence of Longlegs at any of these brutal killings cannot be proven, mysterious letters reminiscent of the ones in David Fincher’s Zodiac are left as a sort of signature at each scene.
For anyone who has seen a handful of notable works in the thriller or horror genre, such as David Fincher’s Zodiac, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure or the aforementioned The Silence of the Lambs, Perkins’s screenplay will sound somewhat familiar.
I was told it would be like The Silence of the Lambs, or perhaps David Fincher's Zodiac if it had been dragged direct out of Satan's anus, with a performance by Nicolas Cage as a serial killer so traumatising it had to be shielded from the (non-paying) public's eyes.
…the character design calls to mind both The Witches (2020) and Longlegs (2024) in that it’s a bastardization of standard beauty practices that’s immediately jarring to witness even from far away.
Weapons feels very much like this year’s Longlegs, an age-old story which feels familiar but told in an innovative new way…
…clear sympathy between Cregger’s two horror films and the grotesque and blackly comic sensibility of Longlegs’ Osgood Perkins.
There's a Longlegs vibe as horror influences crank louder, ditching real-world answers in favor of darkness from beyond.
“Weapons” (2025) is my “Longlegs” (2024).
Akin to the mysteriousness of Nicolas Cage’s character in last year’s Longlegs, the marketing for Weapons left out one of the most talked-about elements: Gladys.
These ominous notes recall the crime scene leave-behind notes of David Fincher’s 1995 breakout Se7en, and they contain written ciphers that also harken back to Fincher’s later Zodiac.
Oregon's dimmed-down yellow lighting and eerie mistiness are reminiscent of David Fincher's Se7en and Zodiac or Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners.
Although the presence of Longlegs at any of these brutal killings cannot be proven, mysterious letters reminiscent of the ones in David Fincher’s Zodiac are left as a sort of signature at each scene. Longlegs is known to conduct each murder in a systematic way, where the father of a family is seemingly coerced or convinced into killing his own.
Yes, it is easily this decade’s answer to films such as The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, but it is by no means the perfect masterpiece that it has been touted as.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
influenced Longlegs (2024)
Themes Plot Characters
Scenes and themes feel lifted in spirit from bigger, meatier thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Zodiac (2007) — it’s the 90s, and Lee is surrounded by taller male agents, and one early sequence sees her moving with a near-panicked intensity through a killer’s lair.
Longlegs’ premise is reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme's horror drama about a young and underestimated female FBI agent on the hunt for an elusive serial killer. Perkins has been explicit about this connection — and his hope for Longlegs to be in conversation with Demme’s classic — but a morass of other influences makes for a muddy movie.
Comparisons to Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs are justified, and in a just world there would be some buzz around Monroe come awards time.
Obvious comparisons to classic serial killer horror films like Jonathon Demme's The Silence of the Lambs and David Fincher's Se7en are valid up until the film's final act.
For Longlegs to be mentioned in the company of The Silence of the Lambs or Seven is to invite direct comparison, and it is a comparison in which Longlegs inevitably comes out worse for wear.
Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ serial killer chiller fully acknowledges a debt to The Silence of the Lambs in its chronicle of a young female rookie agent pulled into the FBI manhunt for a killer wiping out entire families.
Far from the naturalism and historical accuracy of such folk-horrors as Robert Eggers’ The Witch, the production design recalls the offputtingly jagged edges of German expressionism, and the striking costumes owe to the surrealism of Jodorowsky and beyond.
That said, while there is a familiar narrative at play, the film has a good amount of arthouse sensibilities that bring to mind films like The Witch .
The film’s visual palette channels Robert Eggers (The Witch) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain).
Here, the filmmaker remixes the iconic fairy tale into a coming-of-age story of female empowerment and societal constraints on gender and sexuality, which makes the comparisons to Eggers‘ The Witch practically inevitable.
Wandering in the autumnal twilight between the hyper-real anachronism of Tarsem Singh ( The Cell , The Fall , Immortals ) and the grimy, hand-hewn period realism of Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015), Gretel & Hansel is a veritable feast for the senses.
The trailers suggest high concept with a small cast, looking similar in theme to A24’s The Witch but on a reduced scale while decidedly more “Grimm” in origin.
Additionally, Gretel & Hansel takes inspiration from famed Chilean director Alexandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain , using imagery that fans of that film will notice right away, most specifically in some of the Witch’s costuming.
The film’s visual palette channels Robert Eggers (The Witch) and Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain).
Cinematographer Galo Olivares and production designer Jeremy Reed – the latter a veteran of Perkins’ Pretty Thing (2016) – deliver a pageant of darkly mesmerizing visuals, drawing freely from German Expressionism, Hammer horror films, and the surreal visuals of transgressive 1970s European art cinema like The Devils (1971), The Holy Mountain (1973), and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).
Perkins has said that the design of the film was inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain , but there are glimpses of giallo in the film too.
The comedic treatment of macabre themes was superior to that of comparable horror films, such as The Monkey.
Just like 2025’s similarly themed The Monkey, the breakneck pace of Bloodlines really amps up in the dramatic finale.
Bloodlines isn’t even 2025’s first horror movie about the disembodied specter of death creating cartoonishly brutal tableaux of murder: Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey both excelled in and elevated that space.
Like this year’s “The Monkey,” this franchise is about accepting death is a part of life and we’re foolish to think otherwise.
Like The Monkey, Bloodlines focuses on giving its audience a good time rather than focusing on themes and delivering a message.
…unlike Osgood Perkins’ tonally disastrous The Monkey (2025)…
…politically incorrect fun of “Terrifier 3,” “Smile,” “M3GAN,” “Get Out,” “Longlegs,” “The Substance” and “Sinners.”
Some of the selected parodies include Scream 5 & 6, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Get Out, Sinners, Smile, Wednesday, M3gan, Longlegs, and KPop Demon Hunters, to name a few.
Películas recientes como The Substance, Longlegs, Terrifier, M3GAN o incluso fenómenos alejados del terror sirven como materia prima para una sucesión constante de sketches que encuentran en la exageración su principal herramienta cómica.
Chris Elliott’s cameo as Shorthand, this movie’s version of Longlegs…
Others, like a riff on Longlegs featuring the great trio of Chris Elliot, Damon Wayans Jr. and Heidi Gardner, work better as far as hitting most of the beats you’d hope from a send-up of the source material, even with limited screen time.
…from Scream (2022), Halloween, M3GAN, Longlegs, The Substance, Get Out, Weapons, Sinners, Nosferatu, and KPop Demon Hunters…
Without spoiling anything, Lee has a connection to the very vampiric Longlegs that made me wonder if Harker was a Bram Stoker's Dracula reference (pretty sure it is).
It’s here that Perkins rises above merely paying homage to the aforementioned ’90s horror films and channels another one to which he’s more indirectly indebted: M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. The twist in Longlegs, though, exists more at a thematic level than as a plot point. Perkins slowly and slyly adjusts the stakes of the film until they become unmistakably different from where they began.
Psycho (1960)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Longlegs (2024), The Monkey (2025)
Themes Characters
As adults, the protagonists only live in motels, which feels like a reference to “Psycho” (1960), which Perkins’ father, Anthony, starred in.
His father, a revered actor known for his breakout turn as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1992…
Osgood Perkins, being the son of the original slasher Anthony Perkins of Psycho…
He essentially plays a caricature of an effeminate-serial-killer throwback, à la Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) in The Silence of the Lambs, or Norman Bates in Psycho (the role made famous by the director's father, Anthony Perkins), albeit without the iffy, outdated transgender entanglements — for better or worse.
But Perkins is the son of screen legend Anthony Perkins (aka Norman Bates in Psycho) who led a double life as a closeted queer man; something Perkins’ wife, Berry Berenson naturally hid from her two sons.
Director Osgood Perkins (the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, making this the second wide-release horror film in as many weeks with a direct connection to Hitchcock’s pioneering masterpiece) has long had an auteurist proclivity for rendering haunting images.
Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), and Misery (1990) all remain enduring classics not because of their frights but because of their psychological complexity and unnerving atmosphere.
Some are sprawling prestige dramas (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), others lean into psychological terror (Misery, Gerald’s Game), and then there are the delightfully deranged oddities (Creepshow, Maximum Overdrive).
Annie Wilkes (Danica Dreyer sharing Kathy Bates' character name from King's "Misery")…
…one example is Babysitter Annie who is later revealed to have the full name of “Annie Wilkes”. Yes, like in Stephen King’s Misery.
And at the funeral of Hal and Bill’s babysitter (Danica Dreyer), a monkey victim who dies in a horrifying hibachi accident, we learn her name is Annie Wilkes, like the antagonist in Misery.
The Babysitter Annie (Danica Dreyer) has a last name: Wilkes, which feels like a shoutout to “Misery.”
That nickname applies to an instantly iconic Nicolas Cage creation, no less disturbing than Max Schreck’s hunchbacked Nosferatu, a performance that has been a career-long inspiration for Cage. Like that early screen vampire, Longlegs puts us on edge with his twisted body language and exaggerated gestures — that, plus odd framing that crops him off at the head, explains how the character manages to worm his way into our brains.
The strategy recalls a banned 1973 teaser for The Exorcist: flashing images of a possessed Reagan’s face set to the distorted harmonics of Lalo Schifrin’s hellish and eventually abandoned score.
Working on a low budget, Perkins’ use of lenses, low angles and queasily naturalistic lighting are reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s earliest films like Shivers and Rabid; there’s a similar feeling, too, that nothing is taboo or off the table.
Carrie (1976)
Directed by Brian De Palma
influenced Longlegs (2024), The Monkey (2025)
Themes Characters
Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), and Misery (1990) all remain enduring classics not because of their frights but because of their psychological complexity and unnerving atmosphere.
The bullying Hal endures in the first part of the film is comically heightened — he comes home covered in bananas at one point — a sillier version of the over-the-top bullying in Carrie.
Not that Longlegs is really Cage’s film, or Monroe’s or even Alicia Witt’s, who’s hypnotic as the most devoutly religious mother this side of Piper Laurie in Carrie. Rather, this is a showcase for Perkins’ ability to create an entire world out of a few limited locations and cluttered interiors. Audiences’ mileage may vary with the direction Perkins takes the story in its latter stages – this writer preferred the slow burn of Harker following clues of the first half – but Longlegs is nevertheless a icily effective piece of genre filmmaking.
Working on a low budget, Perkins’ use of lenses, low angles and queasily naturalistic lighting are reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s earliest films like Shivers and Rabid; there’s a similar feeling, too, that nothing is taboo or off the table.
Its sensibilities at times reminded me a little of David Lynch, perhaps it’s the way he builds or lights environments with patches of bleak, earthy colour and impenetrable areas of darkness. And yet you can’t pigeonhole the piece as sub-Lynch: Oz Perkins is very much his own person, and the film (the first of his I’ve seen) presages a unique voice. And Nicolas Cage here is nothing like he was in his one Lynch performance in Wild At Heart (1990); as it traverses its dark environments, the film is closer to Blue Velvet (1986).
We don’t really see as many serial killer movies coming out of Hollywood as we used to. Back in the 1990s they were a dime a dozen, headlined by Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and David Fincher’s Seven (1995) but including the likes of Copycat (1995), American Psycho (2000), Natural Born Killers (1994), Kalifornia (1993), and many others.