Perkins' Sons' Dis-ease
I saw Longlegs (2024) but I have less to say about that than I do pondering whence it came.
My wife and I saw Longlegs (2024) last weekend. I went in expecting something more along the lines of a Se7en (1995) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and it certainly has those vibes throughout, but there’s also a touch of the supernatural running through it that I hadn’t anticipated, nor do I think fully worked in a way that I appreciated either. I’ve logged and rated it on Letterboxd, of course, and while I haven’t thought much about the movie since, I can’t stop thinking about the writer/director of the film, or his brother, or their father and his wife; I have about a thousand thoughts shooting in different directions about everything that surrounds the film, trying to connect pieces together that probably just happen to exist and don’t actually require any further connection other than that, but nothing substantial to think or share about the movie itself other than it had its moments, all the actors do a great job, but the movie as a whole didn’t work for me as much as I’d hoped.
Writer/director Oz Perkins, along with his brother, singer/songwriter Elvis Perkins, are the sons of actor Anthony Perkins and model/photographer Berry Berenson.
Anthony, likely best-known for portraying amateur taxidermist/motelier Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, Psycho (1960), navigated the first-half of his Hollywood career being marketed by the studios as a heartthrob despite being half-in/half-out of the closet as a gay man (those who knew knew, and those who didn’t actually probably did). Sometime during the 60’s, he “underwent” “conversion therapy”, married Berry in the 70’s and, together, they bore Elvis and Osgood. Anthony died September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia; Berry died one-day shy of the nine-year anniversary of Anthony’s death - she was a passenger on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center.
And this is what I keep thinking about! How much of Oz’s horror-writing/directing career are him dealing with that trauma? (Apparently some.) How many of Elvis’s songs are him working through the same? (Apparently some, and I wish the videos on this page weren’t private.) Should any of that even be taken into consideration? Does any of that matter at all?
On the one hand, I miss my dad and think about him from time to time, occasionally considering if his death affected me in any way or how. On the other hand, it’s not like I’m out there trying to make it my legacy to honor him in any grand way, so why should I project that idea onto them? They can just write a song or make a movie without it having to be about those things, right?
And then also, historically, the popularity of horror films tends to ebb and flow with what’s going on in the world; academically, the best ones hold up a mirror to society providing a commentary to it all. If this holds true, then what should one be taking away from Longlegs? Is it really more of a personal matter for Oz and folks are either on board or they’re not (and I wasn’t so much), or is it just supposed to be a movie, no more, no less?
Am I trying to connect pieces together that probably require no further connection other than that they all just happen to exist, occupying the same time and space as everything else? Probably!
Current Mood: Surprisingly good!
Listening to: Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping