Oz Perkins
Longlegs

It thundered so much that it rained.

Longlegs, an independent horror film by NEON - an American production company, one of the most important and influential today alongside A24, and carrying the prestige of the last five Palme d'Or winners - directed by Oz Perkins: one of the most awaited and talked-about films of the year, long before it had its official Italian release.

Longlegs is also among the highest-grossing non-mainstream horror films of recent years, even of the last decade according to some sources. And it is precisely in this last decade that the director, son of the legendary protagonist of Psycho, has established himself as one of the most interesting and visionary figures in the cinematic horror scene. Although not as acclaimed as colleagues Peele, Aster, and Eggers (the latter who, in truth, has not directed a true horror film yet).

As Nietzsche taught, the longer you gaze into the abyss, the more the abyss gazes back into you. And calls you to it.

Over the course of four films, there is a great consistency in Perkins's work, making him an auteur in every sense. Starting from a central core: the protagonists are always women. Women who, in their journey, undertake a passage through darkness, a darkness they can embrace or flee from, preserving in this regard a dreadful doubt that Perkins, wisely, leaves unresolved.
Because, however it ends, in Perkins's work, darkness is a meeting with destiny. Something unavoidable and marked on the calendar of Time.
The legs of Evil are always the longest.

Oz Perkins's cinema is a triangle: a recurring shape, an ancestral symbol with multiple meanings, and it forms the structure of Longlegs - just as it did in the 2015 debut, February.
A film in three acts, whose lines finally compose a work with a dark atmosphere, made metaphorically icy by snowy settings, as well as chilling content.

The triangle, the symbol par excellence of the Alchemical and Esoteric Tradition representing transformation and change, which was the focal point in Gretel & Hansel, is here inverted, as if to overturn the Holy Trinity and bringing with it an even more unsettling meaning, associating with the inverted pentacle specific to Satanism.

And so we arrive at the destination programmed by this new journey.
This is indeed the red thread of Longlegs, the goal of the mysterious serial killer played by an amazing Nicolas Cage. The intercession in favor of the man who lives downstairs. Mr. Downstairs.
Compared to other works that have tackled the theme of Satanism, Longlegs has something unique to distinguish it, and certainly, the film is not just another emulation of the Polanskyan genre.

Indeed, one of the most cited references, at least regarding the formula, is The Silence of the Lambs, and certainly with Demme's cult film, Longlegs shares some elements. Starting with the idea of the detective who, besides hunting the murderer, hides dark episodes from her own past.
But the similarities with the '91 film are only apparent and superficial. In truth, misleading.
It reminds me more of Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's masterpiece. The first film to portray a serial killer who kills by proxy, through the mechanism of hypnosis. And even in Cure, a groundbreaking film that opened the doors to the new Japanese horror later exploded with Ringu, esoteric suggestions were not lacking.

Longlegs acts differently, it does not resort to hypnosis, but like the killer in Cure, it never kills by getting its hands dirty. And just as Koji Yakusho will scrutinize the darkness too closely, Maika Monroe will do the same, permanently marked in mind and spirit.

Beyond external references, Longlegs is the film that most closely approaches and connects to the aforementioned Perkins debut, February - The Innocents of Evil (The Blackcoat's Daughter).
The long winter of the soul, marked by the encounter with the Lord of Evil, began then and was the beginning of all. That long winter has not yet come to its conclusion.

Perkins adopts certain themes to process traumas and losses, as he himself has declared. Undoubtedly he hits the mark by touching delicate keys, neuralgic points of Western culture, and he does so with an extraordinary stylistic elegance.

Between symbolism and dissolves.
To exorcise the hell of life.