Everything you need to know about new Nicolas Cage serial killer horror Longlegs

Nicolas Cage plays a figure ripped straight from a nightmare in the eerie new chiller Longlegs. This indie-flavoured horror flick has been steadily gathering traction over the last couple of months, bolstered by an outstanding marketing campaign that, for once, has done a superb job at holding onto the film's secrets.

Horror fans will no doubt be first in line to make their acquaintance with Cage's demonic title character, in a film that has more on its mind than crass jump scares. Here's what you need to know about it. (Don't worry, we've avoided spoilers.)

What is the story of Longlegs?

Novice FBI agent Lee Harker is haunted by an ill-defined incident from her childhood. Now on the hunt for an elusive serial killer who designates himself 'Longlegs', Harker suspects that she has a personal connection to the murders. Before long, she finds herself in the psychopath's gaze.

Who stars in Longlegs?

It Follows star Maika Monroe plays Harker, very much channeling Jodie Foster's tremulous yet steely Oscar-winning performance in The Silence of the Lambs. While Monroe dials things down with subtle nuances (note the tormented Harker's seeming inability to make eye contact with anyone, even her superiors), her co-star Nicolas Cage turns everything way up.

While Cage can do subtlety (see the recent Pig from 2021 as evidence), he's best known for his maximalist turns across different genre fare. As the titular Longlegs, Cage is deliberately outsized and terrifying, playing a twisted human being who is seemingly on the cusp of transcendent change.

Offering strong support is Blair Underwood (L.A. Law) as Harker's superior officer and Alicia Witt (Urban Legend) as Harker's haunted mother.

Who directs Longlegs?

Longlegs is directed by Osgood Perkins. He has made a name for himself with elliptical and oblique chillers like The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), which tease at evil in the margins without ever spelling it out explicitly. Perkins is the son of actor Anthony Perkins who transformed the horror genre with his portrayal of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), considered to be the godfather of the slasher genre.

Perkins has described Longlegs as an ode to his own complex family history. Anthony Perkins died of AIDS in 1992 and Osgood Perkins' mother kept his father's sexuality a secret from him and his siblings.

“Everything I try to do, I try to make it about myself, only so that it creates a truth for me and an honesty, and I know I’m never full of shit if I’m talking about myself,” Perkins tells Indiewire. “As coded as it might be and as many layers of other stuff on it that there are, at the end of the day, all the movies I generate are essentially based on my experience, and that tends to be my experience with my parents.

"My father was a gay man who was closeted, and in the world that we lived in, it wasn’t acceptable. And it still isn’t, as insane as that is. My mother made this decision that that wasn’t going to be true for our family. I wanted ‘Gretel & Hansel’ to be more about that, and I didn’t get there with it because it wasn’t my script and for a hundred other reasons. [When] I set into Longlegs, that was the core truth: A mother can lie, and she can lie out of love.”

Has Longlegs received positive reviews?

Longlegs has been acclaimed as one of the scariest horror films in recent years. It's very much in the tradition of so-called 'elevated horror' that has encompassed the likes of The Witch (2016) and Hereditary (2018), placing provocative ideas in the service of a disquieting atmosphere. It currently stands at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, which indicates how much it has won over the critics.

"How many horror movies can claim to hijack your subconscious?" asks Peter Debruge in Variety. "With Longlegs, writer-director Osgood Perkins delivers the kind of payoff we sought out as kids, daring ourselves to watch films about boogeymen that made us want to sleep with the lights on."