Longlegs’ Horrifying Ending Explained And Unpacked
If you’ve been keeping up with movie news in recent weeks, you’re likely already familiar with Longlegs. The long-awaited Nicolas Cage horror thriller is currently making waves in theaters across the country. The Osgood Perkins-directed film first turned heads after a number of short, incredibly creepy teaser trailers popped up online. Offering some hair-raising audio cues over incredibly sparse visuals, the trailers worked. The film touts the most incredible and disturbing Nic Cage performances in decades. Fans enjoy the film’s unique presentation that’s leaving audiences cowering under their covers.
Now that Longlegs has finally arrived in theaters, audiences have already begun to seek answers regarding the film’s terrifying and ambiguous ending. Luckily, we’re here to help you unpack the final moments of the movie. We’ll help you understand the motifs hidden throughout the production, and ask pertinent questions about the future of the franchise. As always, please know that there are heavy spoilers for the film ahead. Bookmark this page and return later if you haven’t yet watched Longlegs in its entirety. The marketing for this film deliberately obscures the details. Even if you normally don’t mind spoilers, you should really only read ahead if you’ve already watched the movie. Let’s dig into the thrilling conclusion of Longlegs, and analyze the intense implications of the film’s final moments.
What Is Longlegs About?
The narrative of Longlegs centers on an FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe). Harker may or may not have some acute clairvoyant capabilities. Early in the film, Harker locates a wanted murderer in a random house, seemingly based on nothing but intuition. Thanks to her seemingly otherworldly abilities, she works on a series of mysterious murder-suicides, dating back decades. They’re cases the rest of the agency has been unable to comprehend. Each incident in the string of Oregon family deaths sees a father murdering his wife and child before killing himself. The offenders offer a cryptic note at the scene with a Satanic code, signed simply “Longlegs.”
There is no evidence to suggest forced entry or home invasion. Written in a scrawled handwriting, the notes don’t match the profile of any of the victims or alleged perpetrators. The case a real head-scratcher. Luckily, Agent Harker begins to find connections between each of the victims. She notes that every impacted family had a daughter roughly 9 years of age. What’s more, that daughter was born on the 14th of the month. Going deeper, each murder occurrs within 6 days of the child’s birthday. When plotted out on a calendar, these dates form an inverted triangle, a common symbol within Longlegs’ demonic notes. Using this calendar method, Harker realizes that there is only one date remaining to complete the shape, suggesting that Longlegs will strike again soon.
What Are The Dolls In Longlegs?
Upon pouring over the data, Agent Harker and her boss, Carter, return to the site of one of the slaughters. There, they exhume a large porcelain doll that was buried at the scene. Inside the doll’s head, examiners locate a strange metal orb, which seems to emit some kind of evil supernatural frequency. Touching the ball causes Lee to jolt with horrific visions. Meanwhile, the examiner tasked with tagging the evidence claims that the doll is whispering his ex-wife’s name. As we later come to learn, Longlegs is a deranged, devil-worshipping doll-maker. The killer imbues each doll with Satanic magic, causing the recipient’s family to fall under the devil’s trance.
To make matters worse, Harker discovers that her own mother is an accomplice of Longlegs. She’s allowing the pale, terrifying man to live and manufacture his dolls within her basement. Lee was initially poised to be a victim of Longlegs back when she was 9. However, her mother cut a deal with him, and by proxy, with the devil. The deal had her delivering the dolls to each family, masquerading as a nun with a gift. Once Harker’s mother drops off the doll, each father is influenced by Satan’s scheme. He then kills the entire family and himself in ritualistic fashion.
What Happens To The Killer In Longlegs?
Lee recalls the mysterious man who visited her on her ninth birthday. From there, she is able to locate a Polaroid of the pale-faced creep. She ultimately succeeds in having Longlegs arrested with the help of an all-points-bulletin. The doll-maker surrenders to the police without a fight. Upon questioning, he openly explains that he serves as an emissary of Satan. Before Lee can get any useful information out of him, however, Longlegs bids her goodbye with a joyful “Hail Satan.” He then proceeds to smash his own face into the table over and over again until he perishes. It’s an incredibly gruesome scene.
Though this is the end of Longlegs’ life, this is not the last time Lee, nor the audience, sees or hears him. The mysterious killer continues to show up via voiceover, flashback, and demonic visions as a reminder of his unending service to the devil. In fact, Agent Harker realizes that Longlegs already selected his next victim.
How Does The Movie End?
The final horrifying scenes of Longlegs see Harker racing to her boss Carter’s home after she realizes that it’s his daughter’s ninth birthday. Once she arrives, Lee learns that she’s already too late. Her mother delivered the doll to the family some time ago, and the spell has Carter in its clutches. As Harker watches on in horror, Carter stabs his wife to death, before rushing towards his daughter with the same intent. Harker shoots and kills her boss to save his daughter. This is before doing the same to her own mother, who is also brandishing a dagger in support of the devil.
The very last moments of the film see Lee holding back Carter’s daughter, who is very much trapped under the devil’s trance, as she attempts to shoot and destroy the doll. Unfortunately, her gun is out of ammo after unloading on Carter and her mom, and Lee freezes in place at the fear of the demonic forces within the doll. Just before the film smash-cuts to the credits, we hear the unnerving high pitched vocals of Longlegs, singing “Happy Birthday” and once again uttering “Hail Satan.”
Ending Explained & Analyzed
Longlegs ends on a horrifying but partially uplifting note. Agent Harker’s ability to save Carter’s daughter and thwart the combined efforts of Longlegs and her mother seems to suggest that she has officially put a stop to Satan’s evil plan, though the audience are left with a lot of questions. What will happen to the doll after Lee inevitably calls for backup? How will she explain the dead bodies of her boss and her mother when she calls this in? Where will Carter’s daughter go now that her parents are gone? And will the daughter ever return from her doll-induced trance?
Shortly after Harker’s mother learns that Longlegs has died, she takes the doll that was meant for her daughter decades ago and destroys it. While this seems to set Lee free from the controlling tendrils of the devil, it also seems to minimize or entirely remove her clairvoyant capabilities. Perhaps once the credits roll on Longlegs, another responding officer will have better luck loading his gun and smoking the doll designed for Carter’s daughter, and prevent that little girl from remaining entranced by the forces of evil.
The audience never truly learns of Satan’s ultimate plan in the film either. While the devil may have simply wanted to sew chaos on Earth by reaping the blood of the innocent, it seems clear that the dates were arranged to build to something much bigger. Had Harker not been able to stop Carter from killing his daughter, there’s no telling what could have happened next. Would the final piece bring about Armageddon, or the rapture? Or would Satan simply dispose of Longlegs and continue his evil mission with the help of another crazed killer in another locale?
What Makes Longlegs So Creepy?
The Cinematography
Even hardcore horror lovers have made note of this film’s ultra-creepy vibe, which sets Longlegs apart from most run-of-the-mill horror franchises. The film’s unnerving camerawork contributes to that. In one particularly skin-crawling scene, Longlegs approaches a little girl in broad daylight. However, the camera points squarely at Nicolas Cage’s torso, rather than his face. The shot composition throughout most of the movie obfuscates important details, and provides an almost dream-like understanding of the physical space.
When Cage is questioned by the little girl’s mother in the scene, he launches into a bizarre singing routine. If this happened in real life, with the visual clarity of daylight, it would come off as confusing and awkward. However, the dream-like delivery of the scene makes the entire interaction feel like it’s happening within your own nightmares as you toss and turn helplessly in your sleep.
This trend continues into the final scene, as the dialogue of the characters’ becomes jilted and mismatched. It’s reminscent of the way that people communicate within dreams. As Lee arrives at Carter’s residence, his wife asks him to cut the cake through a gritted smile. Carter reiterates that he’s going to find something to cut the “cakes.” The simple addition of pluralization from Carter shifts the discussion from the cutting of a literal cake to a thinly-veiled confession that he’s about to cut up his family. Agent Harker begs and please with the family and with her mother to put a stop to the madness before the bloodshed ensues, but everyone else in the room continues to speak over her in borderline non sequiturs, once again establishing a dream-like environment where things partially make sense, but partially don’t.
The Characterization
The Longlegs character is also exceptionally creepy, due in large part to the all-out performance of Nicolas Cage, who is buried under so many prosthetics and practical makeup effects that you might not even recognize him. In a recent interview with Variety, director Oz Perkins explained that he first conceived of the character before ever drafting the script for the film. While discussing his inspiration, he elucidated “Longlegs was an entity, this shabby – is he a birthday clown? Is he a puppet master? Does he deal with stuffed animals? Is it little pianos? You start to wonder about this person who comes to your kid on their birthday and you’re in another room and you don’t know they’re interacting and that’s weird.”
Perkins’ decision to make the character so bizarre and creepy comes from his desire to explore uncharted territory within the horror genre, as he continued to explain “He doesn’t abduct the kids because we’ve seen that 1,000 times before. He kind of talks to them. You start to be curious about that.”
Will There Ever Be A Sequel?
Despite Longlegs‘ open-ended closer, it seems clear that Osgood Perkins has no existing plans for a sequel at this time. During the same Variety interview mentioned above, Perkins expressed “The ending was meant to be tragic. The devil wins again on a small scale… The story of Lee Harker ends with the ending of the movie.
The last shot that she fires is the worst thing that can happen to her.” Still, some fans have posed the possibility of spinning Longlegs into something of an anthology franchise, with follow-up films set in the same universe that see Satan tormenting people in other parts of the world. At this time, Perkins has made no comment on following up with a Longlegs sequel, though the film’s critical and audience response proves that such a film would be a smashing box office success.
Regardless, fans will surely be on the lookout for Oz Perkins’ next big project, which appears to be an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey, according to the filmmaker’s IMDb. The success of Longlegs may have an equal and opposite reaction for fans of Nic Cage however, as the prolific actor’s ability to embody a horrifying creep will leave you shuddering for days after catching the movie in theaters.
