An isolated house against a bleak winter backdrop… A car parked on the side of the road… A curious little girl who sets off to investigate… A mysterious stranger who arrives… And his voice, his falsely soft, falsely reassuring voice… The opening sequence of the film Longlegs (VF) ends with a shock that makes you jump out of your seat. Constructed and filmed in a masterful manner, this passage sets the tone, threatening, and above all establishes the atmosphere, anxiety-provoking, which will prevail. Fourth film by Osgood “Oz” Perkins, who has been digging a singular horrific furrow since he swapped acting for directing, Longlegs establishes him as one of the masters of horror cinema.
“The opening is described as such in my script,” Osgood Perkins explains in an exclusive interview with The duty. When I arrive on set, everything is meticulously planned. I never improvise: I don’t have that kind of time or luxury. The sequence is set in the 1970s, and filmed in square format: visually, the idea was to evoke the aesthetic of an old Polaroid from that period. It’s like the fragment of an incomplete memory.”
Preceded by justified dithyrambic echoes, Longlegs tells the story of the hunt led by Lee Harker, a young FBI agent, for a serial killer who targets families, and whose modus operandi is strange, to say the least. The murderer’s motivations are, among other things, satanic.
For the record, this was also the case in Osgood Perkins’ first film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter.
“It wasn’t premeditated that I quote myself: it happened during the writing process. I was aware that I was revisiting themes and motifs from my first film, but at the beginning, I saw it above all as a manifestation of my signature. Writing is a bit like a hall of mirrors, because I always end up realizing that I am the subject. The more I advanced, the more I felt like I was appropriating my own cinematic universe. After my previous film, Gretel & Hanselthe only one of my films that I didn’t write entirely, was a bit like regaining my domain, returning to my imaginary world.”
In this “cinematic universe” that is that of Osgood Perkins, the heroine reigns supreme. Indeed, like the filmmaker’s three other films, Longlegs is carried by a protagonist who faces an enigma with supernatural overtones. Before this FBI agent launched in pursuit of an elusive killer, there was the boarder troubled by the actions of a colleague in The Blackcoat’s Daughterthen the nurse suspecting her elderly patient’s house is haunted in AIm the Pretty Thing That Lives in the Houseand finally the older sister intrigued by what the witch is hiding in her cellar in Gretel & Hansel.
Formal panache and disastrous developments, each time…
“In the films I’ve made so far, I look at what is unknown to us, what is hidden from us; what we guess, vaguely, without being able to see it completely, and which worries us on a visceral level. What is behind the curtain, under the glove, behind the mask? What is paradoxical is that I project myself into all my protagonists, but precisely, making them women rather than men allows me to add a layer of mystery. Because I could never claim to understand, really understand, how a young woman thinks and functions. It increases my level of curiosity, and therefore, it stimulates my imagination.”
Laser Cage
If its protagonist of the moment, played brilliantly by Maika Monroe (It Follows / Hunted), is memorable, even more so is its antagonist, played by a terrifying Nicolas Cage (this voice)…
“Nic is very rigorous. To prepare, he studied the text at length, because the character’s punctuation is particular; it gave a rhythm and created a sound. The character also has a slightly stiff attitude, but that hides a discomfort, a malaise… Nic sometimes gives the impression of being out of control, but it’s quite the opposite: he’s a fucking laser ray. “
The punctuation of the murderer is not the only element that distinguishes the lines. In all of Osgood Perkins’ films, the dialogues have a literary side: a bias that enhances the overall unusual charge.
“I majored in English literature, and although I know cinema, my influences are primarily literary: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce… In fact, my screenplays always start as long blocks of prose, because that’s what comes naturally to me. Then I prune. But these remaining dialogues have a double advantage: they say what I want to say, and they say more, in a coded, secret way…”
Terror expanded
Osgood Perkins explores the unspeakable through a slow-burning tension. Again, this is a constant in his films. It is a risky approach, however, as the line between hypnotic and lethargic can be thin. In LonglegsPerkins’ mastery of the subject is total: it is terror expanded for 101 minutes.
“With my director of photography, Andres Arochi, we established from the outset that we would maintain a distanced approach, as if the camera were objective: the camera never represents the point of view of a character, never approaches in extreme close-up… To give you a point of comparison: during a face-off between two cars, if you are glued to the accident, you will not perceive its unfolding. Conversely, if you see the accident happening from afar, it is striking, because you are then able to anticipate the collision, to see it happen, while experiencing a feeling of helplessness, since you can do nothing to prevent it. Distance makes you the witness of something inevitable. This is the state in which I wanted to place the audience.”
The shots, in their very compositions, contribute to generating anxiety. To note the filmmaker, his framing choices are carefully considered.
“For example, I like to leave a lot of space above the actors’ heads, in the image, whereas the usual practice is to frame tightly. However, this space has a very interesting symbolic value. What is this invisible weight? Thoughts? Fears? What is the character’s concern? Is it God, or the Devil, who is floating above his head?”
The childhood of art
And what is floating above Osgood Perkins’ head? As you can see, his approach is currently exclusively oriented towards horror cinema. This is not surprising, since Osgood Perkins fell into it as a child – literally.
In fact, he is the son of Anthony Perkins, immortal interpreter of the killer Norman Bates in the masterpiece Psycho (Psychosis), and who was himself a screenwriter and director.
For the record, Osgood Perkins once played the child version of Norman Bates in Psycho II (Psychosis 2), alongside his father. I obviously can’t help but question the main person concerned on the matter, in connection with his future favorite genre.
“I was only eight years old…” Osgood Perkins recalls with a smile, his gaze suddenly seeming to seek a hold on the past.
“The general context is vague, but what I remember precisely is the feeling I had on the set at Universal Studios. I was standing at the top of this mythical staircase [de la maison Bates]and it was obviously a set, but to me it was completely real. I remember being left alone with the camera, facing this door, the door to Norman’s mother’s bedroom… I see these reflections and these changing shadows again – probably just lighting adjustments… And I remember that, even knowing that I was in a movie set, I was afraid. Later, the idea that you could make something artificial, a film, and that it could become so real that it engenders fear, that fascinated me. But like I said, it’s blurry…”
Blurry, yes… like a fragment of an incomplete memory.
The film Longlegs hits theaters on July 12.