The writer-director of talks demonic dolls, Nicolas Cage, and his movie’s bizarre ending. Osgood “Oz” Perkins isn’t interested in serial killers. The writer and director of Neon’s buzzy new horror movie says he’s never shared pop culture’s morbid fascination with the psychology of psychopaths, nor was he particularly drawn to the FBI agents who dedicate their careers to catching them.
But knew he could sneak a more personal exploration of family trauma and the lies parents tell their children into a suspenseful crime thriller. “A lot of what I do and what I think about is about my parents, their lives and their deaths, their presences and their absences,” Perkins tells . follows Lee Harker (Maika Monroe of ), a psychically gifted FBI agent on the hunt for a Satan-worshipping serial killer behind a series of impossible murders.
At each crime scene, a family with a young daughter has been slaughtered. And even though the father typically commits the murders, the FBI attributes the crimes to someone named “Longlegs” ( ) based on a series of letters written in code and left behind at the scene. As Lee closes in on this mysterious culprit, the clues lead her back home to her deeply religious mother Ruth (Alicia Witt).
Long-repressed childhood memories emerge, and Lee is forced to question her own connection to the case. Maika Monroe plays Lee, a psychically gifted FBI agent, in . For Perkins, crafting a chilling dissection of familial dynamics within the seri.