Longlegs

Could it beeee... Satan?

The fourth feature from director Osgood “Oz” Perkins — son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins — Longlegs follows his back-to-back thrillers The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), both of which he also wrote, and 2020’s twisted fairy tale Gretel and Hansel (2020). Here, again as writer-director, he sets Longlegs in 1991 for reasons not entirely clear to me. It may be that the ’90s shimmer with nostalgia for filmmakers of a certain age; it certainly doesn’t appear to be, in this case, the plot necessitating no cellphones. Perhaps the overarching reason is — without the term ever being mentioned — the shadow of the satanic panic that was at its apex when Perkins, born in 1974, was in his teens. Fear of the devil looms over Longlegs like a swollen thundercloud, and the movie’s creep factor is powerful.