Longlegs filmmaker Osgood Perkins says he doesn’t watch contemporary horror movies, and goes out of his way to avoid them.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter to coincide with the release of his satanic serial killer thriller, Perkins was asked about his perspective on the horror genre, given his father is such a considerable part of it thanks to his role as Norman Bates in Psycho.
Perkins says he wrestled with pride for who his father was and what his father’s career became. That led to a conflicting feeling about horror.
Osgood Perkins reveals what put him off modern horror
”My dad [Anthony Perkins] was, on the one hand, a real shining light in the genre space, having created one of the more indelible characters in movies, nevermind in horror movies or in crime movies and killer movies. So there was the intense radiating pride around that that was mixed with this very uneasy thing that was happening,” Perkins said in the interview.
” When I was coming into my 12 to 15-year-old self and getting into movies, my father was making very bad movies, very bad horror movies. He was being paid well to go to Europe and do shit. And it was obvious that this stuff was shit; it used to upset my mom [Berry Berenson] quite a lot. So the disparity between the zenith of things, which was Psycho, and the basin of things, which was, for instance, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie [Edge of Sanity] that he made when I was a kid, has always planted in me an uneasiness around the horror genre.”
That colored his desire to experience newer horror movies that sit alongside Longlegs.
”On the one hand, I want to identify or atone with the father by going down the same path and representing the good name in the genre in question, but then I also have a sort of a distaste for it. I wouldn’t say I’m someone who likes or dislikes horror movies. I don’t see new ones. I have no interest. I’ll never see MaXXXine, I’ll never see Pearl. I saw X for reasons; it wasn’t on purpose. I don’t see contemporary things. They don’t interest me at all, and that’s not to say that they aren’t great. I’m sure they are great and make a lot of people happy, which is all that really matters.”
Elaborating further, Perkins talks about what he does and doesn’t want from horror.
”But I like the horror genre because it’s the genre that permits the most invention and it encourages the most poetry. It’s all guessing and grasping at what is essentially unknowable. At least that’s what it is for me. If someone dangles a retelling of Jeffrey Dahmer in front of me, I couldn’t pass on something harder. It’s not interesting to me to see someone pretending to be a serial killer. It has no appeal. It’s very base to me. I’d much rather watch Tod Browning’s Dracula and feel the romanticism and the luxury and the pomp and circumstance and the majesty of that kind of work turns me on. But to see a contemporary Terrifier or things like that, it’s the opposite of what I want to be putting into my brain.”
What is Longlegs about?
Longlegs sees an FBI agent in pursuit of a serial killer. She uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
It stars Nicolas Cage as the titular killer and Maika Monroe as FBI agent Lee Harker. Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, and Kiernan Shipka also star.
Longlegs is in theaters now.
