Now that Osgood Perkins' indie horror hit is streaming on Hulu, let’s revisit that odd ending.
That’s a staggering number for such a deeply weird feature that left many audience members scratching their heads.
Love it or hate it,Longlegsleaves viewers with plenty to ponder.
Nicolas Cage in ‘Longlegs’.Credit:NEON
Is Lee possessed, too?
What’s the true nature of her relationship with her mother?
And WTF isNicolas Cagedoing?
Maika Monroe in ‘Longlegs’.NEON
We address those questions and more below.
Here’s theLonglegsending explained.
What isLonglegsabout?
Ruby with a possessed doll in Longlegs.Hulu
Lee soon discovers that Longlegs is a shrieking, flamboyant Satan-worshipper named Dale Cobble (Cage).
See, Dale isn’t a traditional serial killer.
He then delivers the dolls and lets the devil do the rest.
Alicia Witt in ‘Longlegs’.Neon/Courtesy Everett
What happens at the end ofLonglegs?
Hulu
There’s a twist!
After a tense interrogation with Lee, Dale kills himself.
Blair Underwood in ‘Longlegs’.Neon/Courtesy Everett
Lee then drives to her mother’s house with a fellow FBI agent, who is killed by Ruth.
Ruth’s next victim, we learn, is Lee’s boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood).
Ruby is hypnotized by the doll while Carter is also under its sway.
Nicolas Cage in ‘Longlegs’.NEON
He kills his wife and is then shot by Lee before he can attack Ruby.
Ruth tries to stop Lee, saying they’ll both burn in hell if they defy the devil.
This leads Lee to kill her own mother to save the young girl.
Maika Monroe in ‘Longlegs’.Neon
She points her gun at the doll but chooses not to destroy it.
What does the ending ofLonglegsmean?
Neon/Courtesy Everett
Longlegscan be interpreted literally, of course.
But there is a trace of ambiguity in the final moments.
Perkins touched on this theory while speaking withDen of Geek.
“The ending for her is about as bad as it could have turned out,” he said.
Like thats kind of the flourish, the devils ‘Yep, I did that.'"
If that’s too bleak for you, there are other ways to view the film’s broader arc.
“A parent can deceive a kid out of love,” he said.
He continued, “And that’s a strange thing…
In that same interview, Perkins also discussedLonglegsas a subversion of traditional serial killer narratives.
“[Dale] is just a gross guy to me.
That’s the movie.
He’s just a dude who fell in with the wrong crowd: the devil,” Perkins said.
“The idea was to say he’s nothing special, he’s just a gross dude.
Which, at the end of the day, all serial killers are just gross dudes.
There’s nothing cool [or] interesting about them, they just get off.
That’s all they do.
They’re just trying to have an orgasm and they do that from killing people.
It’s f—ing wack.”
It’s these omniscient, unbeatable forces.
What if he’s a piece of s—, which is what they actually are?”
IsLonglegsbased on a true story?
Why does Longlegs look like that?
“My mom put on Noxzema cold cream.
The whiteness of the cold cream just really spooked me.”
The actor elaborated on how his motherstruggled with schizophrenia and severe depression.
“I was coming at it from, what exactly was it that drove my mother insane?”
She would talk in terms that were kind of poetry.
I didn’t know how else to describe it.
I tried to put that in the Longlegs character because he’s really a tragic entity.
Where can I watchLonglegs?
Neon
Longlegsis nowstreaming on Hulu.
It’s also available torent via Amazon Prime Video.
