Late last year, Osgood Perkins announced his movie “Longlegs” would be submitted to the Oscars to have a chance of being nominated. If “Longlegs” isn’t nominated I’ll riot. “Longlegs” is a 2024 horror, suspense, and crime film written and directed by Osgood Perkins. The story follows an FBI agent who was assigned to track down an occultist serial killer after recently finding another beforehand. “Longlegs” was released by distribution company Neon on July 12, and grossed around $130 million internationally surpassing its budget of $10 million.
Although critics liked the movie, a decent amount of casual viewers didn’t like the movie due to the really high expectations the critics/marketing gave the movie. I originally didn’t like it, but as I sat with it and eventually rewatched it I really ended up enjoying it. The problem is, horror movies rarely ever win major awards, let alone get nominated. “The Substance” winning at the Golden Globes was a very good thing for horror because that never really happens. So when it comes to the Oscars, do I see this winning? No. But I really think it can (and should) get nominated.
The only thing I can see hurting the chances of this being Oscar nominated is the film’s marketing. Although it was a very well marketed film which clearly got people in seats, as said before the audience score clearly got affected because of it. The film was marketed as “the next silence of the lambs” and “the best horror movie of the decade” and it didn’t live up to that standard for a lot of audiences. Another thing the marketing did was kind of hide the supernatural aspects of the movie, leaving audiences shocked that the story was supernatural. The movie also had the devil being a prime villain (as in he has long legs under control in a sense) and some people didn’t like that and some of the satanic nature of the movie. In my opinion, it’s clearly portraying it as a bad thing in the movie and also it’s literally a horror movie, so I personally didn’t get offended.
With that being said, Longlegs is one of the coolest and best looking horror movies I’ve seen in a while. Also, the acting and characters are really well executed. I loved Maika Monroe’s character and Nicholas Cage did his thing with Longlegs. He made him a very unnerving villain, applying a lot of tension for the scenes he is in. The story might be lacking towards the end, but overall I think it’s still a very good film that has a lot of things the Oscars should be looking for.
