Longlegs
Isaac Feldberg

Review by Isaac Feldberg

Longlegs 2024

Rewatched 12 Jul 2024

“I’m absolutely areligious,” Perkins insists, reflecting on the continued presence of the devil throughout his filmography. “The devil is delicious, sexy, charming, funny, and smart, and it’s a nice counterpose to the presumed, pristine nature of God. I don't know. It just seems textured and amusing, and sort of funny.”

Rather than drawing on his own beliefs, the devil is a figure that allows Perkins to address the idea that “there's a power out there that’s probably working on you in a bad way,” he says. “If you say ‘the devil,’ it immediately includes every audience member, and it includes every audience member on their terms.” Add to that how the devil has been romanticized and misappropriated throughout the ages, and Perkins finds him irresistible.

“The fact that Republicans could think Democrats worship the devil and eat babies is so fabulous in terms of how fucking stupid that is,” he says as our interview wraps up. “It's much worse what happens in the name of Christianity, in the name of God, than what happens in the name of the devil.”

Adds Perkins: “I don’t know that there have been many crusades that have happened because of the devil. I don’t think many Native people were uprooted from their homes and slaughtered because of the devil. I don't think anybody's saying, ‘Hail, Satan’ when we are colonizing a land. They're saying, ‘Praise Jesus.’”

From my interview with Osgood “Oz” Perkins on Longlegs and his sympathy for the devil, at Inverse. 

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