How ‘Longlegs’ Director Osgood Perkins Made One of the Scariest Movies of the Year

“Longlegs” is a movie whose advanced hype and ingenious marketing campaign has turned it into the must-see horror movie of the summer. But the film is a rare feat, one that actually lives up to the hype, if not surpasses it. It’s the kind of movie that burrows under your skin, one that you’ll find yourself thinking about days or weeks later. The malevolence remains long after the movie is over.

The fact that it came from Osgood Perkins, the director of gauzy, somewhat difficult horror movies like “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,” makes the more commercial elements of “Longlegs” seem even more bizarre and unsettling.