‘Longlegs’ Lives in Your House on Blu-ray with Revealing Director Commentary [Review]
This summer’s hit serial killer horror movie Longlegs has already creeped its way into your home, currently available to stream on Digital platforms and to own on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD physical media, highlighted by a revealing feature commentary track with the film’s writer and director Ozgood Perkins.
Longlegs stars Maika Monroe (The Guest, It Follows, Watcher, Significant Other), Blair Underwood (American Crime Story), Alicia Witt (Urban Legend, The Walking Dead), and Nicolas Cage (Renfield, Arcadian).
In the film, FBI Agent Lee Harker (Monroe) is a gifted new recruit assigned to the unsolved case of an elusive serial killer (Cage). As the case takes complex turns, unearthing evidence of the occult, Harker discovers a personal connection to the merciless killer and must race against time to stop him before he claims the lives of another innocent family.
Maika Monroe delivers an outstanding, nuanced performance that solidifies her status as the horror genre’s most valuable cinematic asset, while Alicia Witt, as Harker’s mother Ruth, reminds us what an amazing talent she is, delivering a devastating portrayal of the most tragic character at the center of the story. Both deserve Academy Award nominations for their powerful, raw work.
And then there’s Nicolas Cage’s terrifying turn as the character known at first only as Longlegs, later identified to be Dale Cobble, a performance destined to be remembered as legendary, completely transformed into an androgynous T Rex-quoting Satan worshipper with a talent for dollmaking that will haunt your mind long after viewing.
Perkins is a master at milking every ounce of tension out of every nerve-shredding scenario he puts his characters in, and the puzzle within his story comes together ever so gradually only to crash into a bloody finale that leaves viewers in a dreamy state of shock and emotional devastation.
The Blu-ray that we were provided with has a slipcase featuring an extreme closeup of Longlegs’ darkened eyes on an otherwise bright red backdrop, with the same art on disc case cover and the disc itself, as well, and no additional inner artwork.
Bonus content on the Blu-ray includes all of the ultra-creepy, highly effective mystery teasers and official trailers, plus 18 crime scene photos in the Evidence section, and brief on set interviews with Perkins, Monroe, Underwood, and Witt, each running around five minutes, but the main attraction here is the feature length audio commentary with Perkins.
Read on for highlights of what we learned about Longlegs from Ozgood Perkins’ commentary.
- The simple but striking big red squares behind the opening credits “pointed to the horror genre in a way that’s about as simple as you can get”.
- The finished opening scene is exactly as he had originally envisioned it in his head, and the first house on screen is derived from the house in Cape Cod where Perkins spent all his summers as a kid.
- The bright winter jacket that young Lee is wearing is derived from the jackets worn by the evil offspring in David Cronenberg’s The Brood.
- Perkins considers Longlegs to be a “pop horror” movie, “using Silence of the Lambs as a way into the movie, and making no bones about really. It’s not pretending to not be Silence of the Lambs. It’s sort of pretending to be Silence of the Lambs.”
- The Devil is seen in numerous shots throughout the film, many of which are pointed out during the commentary, including his first appearance standing next an American flag behind Lee as she is studying evidence the police department.
- The film is a bit of a family affair, as the song playing in Lee’s car is written and recorded by Osgood’s wife, while his daughter, Beatrice Perkins, is in the scene with Longlegs in the convenience store, and his three-year-old son actually did young Lee’s childhood drawings seen in Ruth’s house.
- The scene when Harker meets Longlegs in the police interrogation room was literally the first time that Monroe worked with or even saw Cage in character.
- Cage stayed isolated and somewhat in character throughout the two weeks that he was on set, until after his final scene when he spoke to the crew as himself for the first time.
- Ozgood personally applied the blood onto Witt’s character, Ruth.
- Fully acknowledging the purposeful influence of similar serial films like Silence of the Lambs and Seven, Perkins concludes his commentary saying, “As long as you’re stealing form the good stuff, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Longlegs is available now on Digital (watch on Prime Video here), and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD, from Neon.
You can watch our Blu-ray unboxing video below.
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