Thanks to its rave reviews, mysterious marketing and the always-intriguing presence of Nicolas Cage, new horror Longlegs is the movie that everyone’s talking about right now.
But despite dominating the conversation for the past week, many people are only just recognising something interesting about the film’s director.
Longlegs was written and directed by Osgood Perkins, whose past work includes The Blackcoat’s Daughter, The Girl In The Photographs, I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House and the reimagined dark fairytale Gretel & Hansel.
But before making the jump to filmmaking, Oz was previously an actor, appearing in small roles in Not Another Teen Movie, Secretary, the 2009 Star Trek movie and Legally Blonde.
Oz played Elle Woods’ Harvard pal David Kidney in the hit rom-com, which has come as a surprise to many fans of his later work.
But Legally Blonde isn’t the only film the director has an unlikely connection to. His dad was Anthony Perkins, better known as Norman Bates in the pioneering horror movie Psycho, as plenty of people are only just discovering over on X (formerly Twitter)...
Maika Monroe takes the lead in Longlegs, as an FBI agent assigned to investigate a mysterious string of mass murders, only to discover there’s a lot more to the case than first meets the eye.
Nicolas Cage also makes a scene-stealing appearance as the titular serial killer, donning elaborate prosthetics to help him get into character, with a performance that he’s revealed has a particularly personal connection for him.
Longlegs is in cinemas now.