WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Longlegs (2024)

Summary

• Longlegs delivers a shocking twist ending that solidifies its status as a horror classic.
• Director Osgood Perkins' Stephen King adaptation, The Monkey, will explore similar themes of cursed toys controlling lives.
• Longlegs paves the way for Perkins to enter the horror mainstream, building on the success and audience goodwill generated.

Now that 2024’s critically acclaimed Longlegs follows Maika Monroe’s FBI agent Lee Harker as she tries to track down Nicholas Cage’s terrifying titular serial killer. Effectively chilling and enigmatic, Longlegs won over critics and audiences upon release.

While Perkins’ movie remains a tense watch throughout its entire runtime, it is Longlegs’ twist ending that cements its status as a horror classic. In a brutally bleak twist, viewers learn that Cage’s eponymous killer wasn’t physically involved in the killings seen throughout the movie. Instead, he crafted lifelike dolls of young victims and these dolls, somehow possessed by Satan’s powers, convinced the fathers of these families to kill them. This conspiracy is gruesomely confirmed when Harker’s mother, revealed to be Longlegs’ accomplice, delivers a doll to her boss’s home. Only Lee and her boss’s daughter survive this visit.

Longlegs’ Ending Has A Lot In Common With 2025's The Monkey

Osgood Perkins Also Directs The Stephen King Killer Toy Story

The revelation of Longlegs’ grim twist makes Perkins’ next movie all the more exciting. 2025 will see Perkins direct the Stephen King adaptation of The Monkey, an exciting horror that brings to life a story from the author’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. Both Longlegs and The Monkey revolve around mysterious cursed toys (dolls in Longlegs and a windup monkey in The Monkey) that seemingly control people’s lives thanks to some dark, unexplained influence. In The Monkey’s original short story, two brothers discover the toy seemingly causes the death of one of their shared loved ones every time it is used.

It is not yet clear how much Perkins will change the plot of The Monkey. However, Longlegs successfully hides its twist until the movie’s closing act proves that the director has some clever tricks up his sleeve. Quite a few short stories from King’s Skeleton Crew have been adapted so far, but The Monkey alone features the unique combination of subverted childhood innocence and nightmarish horror previously found in Longlegs. Longlegs initially utilizes dolls for a creepy atmosphere, much like King’s short story. By the time the heroes realize these toys are cursed, it is too late in both stories.

The Monkey Can Build On Osgood Perkins’ Success With Longlegs

King’s Movie Adaptation Might Be More Accessible

The Monkey can be a perfect follow-up to Longlegs since the Nicholas Cage serial killer thriller left a lot unexplained. Stylistically, Longlegs is more outre than comparable serial killer thrillers like Se7en or Silence of the Lambs, but the movie is also more straightforward and accessible than Perkins’ earlier efforts I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In This House or Gretel and Hansel. As such, Longlegs provides a perfect stepping stone to allow the actor-turned-director to enter the horror mainstream. With his Stephen King adaptation, Perkins can build on the hype and audience goodwill that Longlegs has generated.