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On Saturday night I sat in a packed theater in Century City and watched Osgood Perkin’s terrifying boiler piece Longlegs. The unsettling horror gem seems to be on everyone’s minds after the weekend, especially after it made over $20 million in the US.
Congrats to Legally Blonde all-star Perkins for writing and directing an original horror movie that’s bringing everyone to the movie theater.
Today, I wanted to go over the film’s controversial ending, talk about its themes, and even touch on the plot.We’ll do our best to not make it too cryptic.
Beware, spoilers for LONGLEGS below.
Sound good? Let’s dive in.
The Plot of ‘Longlegs’
Longlegs follows FBI agent Lee Harker, a gifted new recruit assigned to an unsolved cold case involving a serial killer known as “Longlegs.” Longlegs targets families with daughters born on the 14th and leaves cryptic, Satanic coded messages at the crime scenes.
As Lee delves deeper into the investigation, she uncovers a series of occult clues and disturbing discoveries that suggest a connection between the murders and her own past. Lee is able to decipher the messages, and we learn this may be because Longlegs is connected to her past, when he visited her as a child, but spared her, even though she was born in the 14th.
Lee must race against time to decipher the clues and stop Longlegs before he claims the lives of another innocent family. Eventually, she discovers Longlegs has to have an accomplice to these murders. She’s able to capture Longlegs with the helps of other FBI agents, but in her interrogation with him, he kills himself.
The clues he gives her leads her home, where she finds out her mother actually works with Longlegs, and he’s been living in her basement all along. It turns out they put the spirit of Satan into dolls that she then delivers, and it convinces people inside homes to kill themselves and their families.
Her Mom does this because she agreed to trade these horrible deeds in order to save her daughter’s life when she was a kid. All these repressed memories come back to Lee, as her mom explains how this happened to her. Lee’s Mom uses the satanic doll to knock her out. Then she heads to Lee’s boss’s house whose kid is having a birthday on the 14th.
Lee tries to stop her, but when she gets there, the doll has already possessed with father who kills the mother. Lee is able to shoot her mom and her boss but she’s out of bullets before she can shoot the doll.
The movie ends on a cliffhanger, with us wondering if Lee can shake the devil and save the girl, or if the doll is going to get her to kill herself and the kid.
Explaining the Longlegs Ending
The ending of Longlegs leaves a lot to the viewer’s interpretation.
Like I said above, after a harrowing investigation, FBI agent Lee Harker discovers that her own mother was Longlegs’ accomplice over the past for decades, helping him murder ten families with the help of bespoke satanic dolls. In a devastating final confrontation, Lee is forced to kill her mother to prevent further harm, understanding that she made this horrific sacrifice to save Lee’s life.
But with the satanic doll still in play, Lee is out of bullets. She is left staring at the doll while holding the girl’s hand. This ambiguous ending leaves lingering questions about whether the cycle of evil has truly ended or if Lee, now potentially influenced by the doll and Longlegs, will carry on his sinister legacy and murder the child, and possibly herself.
The film concludes with a sense of unease, suggesting that the darkness they confronted may not be fully vanquished. What really resonates is that it brings into question whether or not evil can be truly defeated.
The Themes of Longlegs
Longlegs
Neon
In a sense Longlegs is one big look at Lee’s trauma. Will she ever get over the interaction with Longlegs as a child, and the memories she repressed? Will her future be defined by her past?
You can also ask if her mother, who became defined by the evil she committed, ultimately practiced the perfect act of love, sacrificing her own sanity and belief in God to save her daughter’s life.
Another thing that came up in my discussions once those credits rolled in reverese was the ambiguous nature of good and evil in this film. We don’t see many good things happen, so it thematically seems to tell us that maybe the only tangible thing in the world is the bad, and the good is much more ethereal.
There’s a lot to unpack with this one. I’d love to know what interpretations you have and what you think it all means.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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