The ‘Longlegs’ Opening Is One of the Scariest Horror Scenes Ever
Osgood Perkins has made a beast of a film with Longlegs, which stars Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, and Nicolas Cage. The horror thriller is a procedural in the vein of The Silence of the Lambs, but offers up a singularly chilling experience. You’ve likely heard about the movie for months, thanks to distributor Neon’s extensive and creepy promotional campaign. Now, it’s finally in theaters. It’s one of those special films that’s best to go into blind, without learning too much about the plot. And Longlegs sets you up for 101 minutes of sheer terror right from the jump, with its nerve-shredding opening scene.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
Longlegs begins in a 4:3 ratio, which conveys an immediate claustrophobic feeling, the negative space of the black bars on either side of the image threatening to swallow it whole. We start with a shot of a car’s front window as it makes its way through a quiet street. There’s an unsettling stillness to the image, as if you can’t quite tell if the car is moving or not. The footage sepia-toned, like an old photograph—a relic from the past. Slowly and steadily, the shot is saturated from that sepia coloring into the cool, icy winter that sets the scene.