Is Longlegs A Prequel To The Blackcoats Daughter?

Summary

Fans divided on Longlegs' ending, highlighting Nicolas Cage's performance & comparisons to The Silence of the Lambs.
A fan theory suggests Longlegs could be connected to Perkins' The Blackcoat's Daughter, noting similarities in story and characters.
Perkins' distinct filmmaking style ties Longlegs and The Blackcoat's Daughter together with themes of family, identity, and good vs. Evil.

Whether fans are sold on the ending of Longlegs or think the explanation could have been better, there's no denying it was one of the biggest horror movies of 2024. With a script by and direction from Osgood Perkins, Longlegs is a well-crafted tale about a young FBI agent named Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) who is consumed by the case of a strange and eccentric serial killer. It's a showcase for Nicolas Cage, who is right at home as this odd character, and the movie has also been compared to The Silence of the Lambs.

Part of the fun of being a horror fan is checking out theories from others about how the puzzle pieces of a story fit together. There is one cool fan theory that wonders if Longlegs could be connected to another well-made horror film by Perkins.

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By Aya Tsintziras

Could Longlegs Be A Prequel To Oz Perkins's The Blackcoat's Daughter?

Kiernan Shipka as Kat standing outside boarding school in the snow in The Blackcoat's Daughter

One Redditor came up with a fascinating idea:

"Another theory: Longlegs as a prequel to Perkins The Blackcoat's Daughter. The timeline plus a few other details seem to fit."

In 2015, a decade or so before Osgood Perkins's adaptation of Stephen King's The Monkey, the filmmaker released the bleak movie The Blackcoat's Daughter, which stars Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts. Both Longlegs and The Blackcoat's Daughter are stories of demonic possession and the movies look similar, too. They have a sparse and literary tone and plenty of beautiful, creepy shots of a snowy small town. They both leave audiences with an unsettling feeling as well.

The main characters in both movies share some similarities. Monroe's Longlegs character Lee has been living with childhood trauma and spends a lot of time on her own. The Blackcoat's Daughter follows three timelines and audiences are introduced to Kat (Shipka) as a boarding school student who notices something odd happening. Then, after meeting Joan (Roberts), it turns out that Joan is really Kat. The scenes of Joan take place nine years after the beginning of the movie. Like Lee, Joan/Kat is coping with trauma, too. She has to live with the fact that a demon took her over when she was a teenager and she has been hurting people ever since. It's clear that Lee and Joan/Kat don't have many close people in their lives and that they haven't been able to share or be vulnerable.

While of course Longlegs, which is set in the 1990s, isn't actually a prequel to The Blackcoat's Daughter, it's fun to view it through that lens. Perhaps the devil possesses Cage's serial killer Longlegs and then moves on to Joan/Kat. It's easy to imagine these stories being connected as they have a lot in common and the two movies look so much alike.

The most forgettable horror prequels ignore what made the original movies dynamic and special, from well-written characters to important and thrilling twists. Longlegs sets up an interesting and creepy world about demonic possession and a smart FBI agent at the heart of it all. It's cool to think that Perkins's 2015 movie could be the prequel to his big summer 2024 release.

What Did Osgood Perkins Say About The Blackcoat's Daughter And His Horror Movie Career?

Many have noticed that Longlegs and The Blackcoat's Daughter have a similar eerie tone, and Osgood Perkins was asked about this in an interview for We Live Entertainment. The filmmaker said:

"we’re trying to find a signature, right?"

Perkins continued:

"you want to dig in and get down there with yourself. The Blackcoat’s Daughter was very much about, you know, it was very true for me. It was very much about myself. So, it becomes a refrain that you want to revisit in the same way that artists revisit subjects you know, and they know you know."

Perkins has a distinct filmmaking style so it's no wonder these movies look so much alike. His horror films talk about family, identity, good vs. Evil, and growing up, and it's interesting to compare them. Besides these two beloved movies, Perkins wrote The Girl in the Photographs and wrote and directed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. From the teaser for The Monkey, it's unclear if this movie will have much in common with Longlegs and The Blackcoat's Daughter. Whether or not it does, it's still interesting to hear how Perkins approaches his horror career. He told The Hollywood Reporter:

"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.”