In Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, demonic works are a full-time job. The devil is everywhere and nowhere — inescapable but often unseen. One minute, he’s colluding with Nicolas Cage to kill small children, and the next, he’s stalking Maika Monroe’s Agent Lee Harker at the library. Did you notice just how often he shows up? (Warning: spoilers ahead.)
It’s clear from the beginning of Longlegs that Lee Harker has some kind of supernatural connection to the “Longlegs†serial killer case, but it takes a minute to figure out what that might be. The closer she gets to untangling the truth, the more we realize just how closely the devil has been watching her. Frame after frame, you can see him lingering in the background.
According to Perkins, these dark cameos are a wink at the idea of Satanic subliminal messaging — a constant reminder of how present the devil has been in Lee’s day-to-day life, especially as she begins “snuggling up against the revelation.†As seriously as some folks have taken Longlegs, Perkins emphasizes that it’s also meant to be playful.
“You’re with a bunch of people who are kind of grooving on making a crazy movie, and you try to find intelligent, sophisticated, and kind of artful ways to make it groovier,†Perkins tells Vulture. Seeing the devil pop up everywhere is part of the fun. Below, you’ll find a detailed guide to every time the dark lord pops up on screen.
Supervising the investigation
A shadowy figure lurks in the back left corner of the frame while Lee Harker begins tracking down the Longlegs killer.
“It’s the first time that she’s engaging with these crimes,†Perkins says. “Her analytical mind is being turned on by the evidence, and she’s kind of clicking it into action. And so it made sense that the devil would be with her as her chaperone, as her coach, as her date.â€
As for why the demon is lurking next to an American flag: “I mean, you know, probably not much more needs to be said about that.â€
Shadowing Longlegs
A giant demon shadow lingers over Longlegs during a nighttime walk.
The first time we see Longlegs in the present, you might notice a giant horned shadow looming over him as he walks through the forest. To Perkins, it made sense that the devil would tag along —“kind of an ‘I’ll come, too’ sort of a vibe.â€
Eavesdropping on a phone call
The devil hovers in a doorway just over Lee’s shoulder right before the phone rings.
As Lee takes a closer look at the birthday card she received from Longlegs, we notice the creepy figure in the doorway. Then, she gets a call from her mother. It’s all playful foreshadowing — a hint that her mom has been in on these gruesome crimes for years.
“She’s going a step deeper into the case,†Perkins says of Lee. “Now, the birthday card is coming to her. The cipher is coming to her. She’s being initiated into the next ring, or the next level, the next circle, and it’s like the devil’s there to indicate crossing a threshold.â€
The open doorway behind Lee is a motif Perkins has used in all of his films — a universal and ominous symbol of the unknown. “It’s a thing that it’s a thing that looks right to me,†Perkins says.
A haunted library
The demon’s reflection appears in glass at the end of a long row of books.
As in all great crime procedurals, Lee eventually stops by the library to research the murders. More specifically, Perkins wanted to evoke Clarice’s late-night microfilm research (and visit with those creepy entomologists) in Silence of the Lambs.
Although the plan had originally been to include extras — including Perkins’ wife and one of their children — he eventually chose to forego the extras and further emphasize that Lee is working overtime.
The devil is helping Lee in her investigation because in the end, it’ll all lead to a horrific outcome. “The devil in this movie wants the worst thing possible to happen to an individual,†Perkins says. In Lee’s case, that would be killing her own mother — which, in Perkins’ estimation, “is about as bad as a person’s day can get.†By giving Lee the information she needs to arrest Longlegs, the devil is simply guiding us toward the next movement in a bigger composition.
The devil’s hideaway
The devil sits at the back of Longlegs’ basement lair.
Longlegs lives in Lee’s mother’s basement, and Silence of the Lambs fans will likely notice that this, too, feels like an homage to Buffalo Bill’s home base. From the “bulby mirrors†to the feather boa and the dressmaker’s bust, the whole place practically begs us to start dancing to “Goodbye Horses.†“We wanted to feel the devil’s presence in that corner,†Perkins says.
In designing the space, Perkins and his crew wanted to hint that before he became a serial killer, Dale Cobble (Cage) was some kind of glam rock musician. “There’s one of those fuzzy carpeted amps back there — those big, shaggy, furry amps,†Perkins says. “There’s a deceased fish bowl with nothing in it. You know, there’s all the markers of a gross kid’s basement — a gross teenager’s basement.â€
The reverse of this shot, Perkins says, finds Longlegs in bed reading The Golden Bough —a comparative study of mythology and religion from anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. “We didn’t know that shot until we got to it on the day,†he says. “It became sort of a wink at The Graduate — him and him in his bed, sort of staring off into nothingness, sort of ‘Sound of Silence.’â€
Demonic infestation
The devil appears behind Lee as she notices a huge bug scurrying into the basement at her mother’s house.
None of us loves finding a big-ass bug in our space, but here, the rogue beetle running under the door into Lee’s mother’s basement signals that something even darker lives down there. According to Perkins, this was one of those devil appearances that was not originally in the script; the idea came up during post-production.
“When we were looking at it in the editing room, we saw the shape back there, and we sort of said, ‘Oh, this is one of those moments where she’s where another layer of the onion’s being pulled off, and she’s getting a glimpse at a deeper understanding.’ She’s at the fucking door. And so for the devil to be there to sort of again, monitor her progress and kind of encourage her along the way, it felt like a good place.â€
The devil’s playthings
The devil stands in Lee’s childhood doorway as she looks through her toy box.
As we come to learn, the devil has haunted Lee’s family since her 9th birthday. She’s escaped death thanks to her mother’s grim bargain, but still, he’s been watching and waiting for his moment to strike. Beyond the thematic resonance of this moment, Perkins and his production team loaded it with details — including some of Perkins’ own children’s drawings on the wall.
“There was a whole red piano thematic in the script,†Perkins says. “We shot a lot of red, little red piano things. It never really made it into the movie, but it’s in there. And the toy chest was derived from my own toy chest when I was little. I kept a black and white photograph of Linda Blair in The Exorcist at the bottom of my toy chest when I was like, eight years old. I kept it at the bottom, face down, just so I knew where it was.â€
Killer instinct
The devil appears in silhouette through a window as Lee hears her mother shooting a detective outside her house.
“Another open doorway, and another instance of seeing it in the editing room and feeling like there’s a tricky place to put it,†Perkins says. “Again, the devil appears when the next revelation is at hand. In this case, the revelation is, ‘Oh, your mom dresses up like a nun and shotguns people twice. That’s new information.’â€
Unheavenly father
The devil towers over a young Lee as she sits on her bed.
This appearance was one of the few included in the original script, so Perkins and his team framed the shot accordingly. “It was probably one of the first ones, if not the first one, that we built to see what it would look like,†Perkins said. “It’s just showing in a picture what the movie is and also giving the devil an almost parental presence in her little room behind her.â€
An unwanted houseguest
The devil makes his final appearance in a reflection on the door of Lee’s boss Agent Carter’s (Blair Underwood’s) house.
As far as Perkins is concerned, this is the best of all his hidden devils: “It’s fun. It’s scary. It’s punctuation.â€
The devil’s chilling presence stands out against the cheerful birthday party music playing inside the house, and it further accentuates Blair Underwood’s unsettling grin as he looks out onto his street and shuts the door behind Lee — trapping her inside for the film’s harrowing final act.
There was also a practical reason to include the devil in the shot; it hides the camera’s reflection in the door. At a certain point, Perkins says, a movie starts to tell you what it wants. In this case, that was to cover the camera with the devil, “ushering in the last movement of his opera that he staged.â€
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