General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Longlegs

Longlegs is a 2024 American horror thriller film written and directed by Osgood Perkins, in which FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) pursues an occult serial killer, played by Nicolas Cage, whose crimes carry a personal connection to her own past. It was distributed by Neon and released in United States theaters on July 12, 2024.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Osgood Perkins (also known as Oz Perkins), previously of The Blackcoat's Daughter, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and Gretel & Hansel¹^•³
Cast	Maika Monroe as Agent Lee Harker, Nicolas Cage as Longlegs, Blair Underwood as Agent Carter, Alicia Witt as Ruth Harker¹^•²
Release	July 12, 2024 (wide, US theaters); streaming August 23, 2024; distributed by Neon²
Format	101 minutes, rated R for disturbing images, bloody violence, and some language; genres horror, mystery, and thriller²
Budget	Under $10 million, with a marketing campaign that also cost less than $10 million⁴^•⁵
Box office	$22,400,119 domestic opening; $74,346,140 domestic and $127,961,936 worldwide gross⁶
Critical reception	85% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (323 reviews) and 61% on the audience Popcornmeter; Metascore of 77 from 52 critic reviews²^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The film follows Lee Harker, a rookie FBI agent assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn as evidence of the occult emerges; she discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.⁸ The killer, known as Longlegs, never appears at the crime scenes but seems to influence families into committing murder-suicides, leaving behind cryptic notes written in Zodiac-style code.⁹ Harker is described by colleagues as highly intuitive, and what interests the bureau most is that she seems to know where to look for terrible things.⁹^•¹⁰

The story is set in the 1990s, with flashbacks to the 1970s, and follows Harker as she cracks the killer's coded messages and maps the deaths onto an inverted triangle with occult significance.¹¹^•¹⁰ In the ending, Longlegs, whose real name is Dale Cobble, is arrested and kills himself by repeatedly smashing his face into an FBI interrogation table; Harker then learns that her mother Ruth agreed to help Longlegs carry out his horrors, letting him use her basement as his workshop, to prevent Lee from being one of his victims on her ninth birthday.³

Production and performances

Perkins shot the film with cinematographer Andrés Arochi, whose skewed framing of deep corridors, doorways, and voids was noted by reviewers as a source of the film's dread.¹¹ Cage, who also co-produced through his Saturn Films company, plays the killer in what he calls his "nouveau shamanic" acting mode, nearly unrecognizable under prosthetics, with touches of Manson, Anton LaVey, and glam rock in the characterization; T. Rex's "Bang a Gong" features on the soundtrack.¹¹ Monroe, previously the lead of It Follows (2014), plays Harker with what one review called an emotional flatness and fraying calm rather than the steely determination of Clarice Starling.¹¹ Monroe did not fully see Cage in makeup until about halfway through filming.¹²

Marketing campaign

Neon's promotional campaign is a large part of the film's story. It began in January 2024 with a 40-second teaser showing a family photo and a 911 call, without the film's title; Neon released three such pieces, and in the final one audiences heard Cage's voice for the first time.⁵ The studio deliberately hid Cage's face in all marketing materials, a choice few distributors would make with a star of his profile, according to Neon's president of publicity Christina Zisa.¹³

Breadcrumbs and stunts. The campaign included a coded, Zodiac-like half-page advertisement in the Seattle Times printed "at the request of Longlegs," billboards in Los Angeles with a phone number that played whispered threats from Cage, a true-crime-style website about the film's fictional "Birthday Murders," and encrypted newspaper ads and fake blog posts.¹⁴^•¹⁵ On July 8, 2024, Neon posted a video of Monroe in character meeting Longlegs for the first time, with Cage's face blacked out and a recording of her heart rate jumping from 76 beats per minute to 170 beats per minute; the audio came from a microphone taped to her chest, and director Perkins had deliberately separated the actors before the scene.¹⁵^•¹⁶ The whole campaign cost less than $10 million.⁵

Box office and reception

The film opened to $22,400,119 domestically, Neon's biggest opening ever and the best launch for an independent horror film in a decade, despite opening against Despicable Me 4 in its second week.⁶^•¹⁵ It finished with $74,346,140 domestically (58.1% of its total) and $127,961,936 worldwide.⁶ A later report on the follow-up project described the original as having grossed over $180 million globally and as the highest-grossing independent film of the last ten years; the figure differs from Box Office Mojo's $127.96 million worldwide total.¹²^•⁶

Critics responded strongly. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus calls it "saturated in disquieting mood" and credits Cage's "nightmarishly gonzo performance"; the audience score of 61% sits well below the critics' 85%.² Metacritic recorded a Metascore of 77 from 52 reviews, with 87% positive.⁷ Reviewers frequently compared the film to The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en; The Guardian placed it below those films, citing a crude chunk of third-act exposition, while praising Monroe's performance.¹⁰ Common criticisms among audiences and some reviewers concerned the script and unresolved questions about the killer's story.²

Follow-up

In April 2026, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Perkins and Cage were working on a new Longlegs feature, not billed as a sequel, with Paramount Pictures picking up distribution rights; Neon stepped down from producing the project because of its scope and budget. No release date had been announced at the time of the report.¹²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Supernatural horror films › 2020s supernatural horror films › Titles symbols to L

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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