Longlegs' Rotten Tomatoes Scores Break 2 Pivotal Records 9 Years After Promising Debut

Summary Longlegs is Osgood Perkins' best-reviewed film yet, earning an impressive 86% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite its unconventional story, Longlegs has resonated with audiences, earning over $30 million in its first week.

Perkins' move towards more accessible horror in Longlegs has proven successful, paving the way for future mainstream projects.

With an impressive critical and audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the horror sleeper hit Longlegs has broken a pair of pivotal records for its director. Writer-director Osgood Perkins has a mixed track record with both critics and general audiences. The horror helmer began his feature film career with 2015’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a supernatural thriller starring Emma Roberts and Kiernan Shipka. He followed this with 2016’s languorously paced haunted house movie I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and 2020’s Gretel and Hansel, both of which received mixed reviews.

Perkins’ latest movie, 2024’s serial killer thriller Longlegs, is another story entirely. Starring It Follows lead Maika Monroe and screen legend Nicolas Cage, Longlegs is a smash hit that has impressed both critics and cinema attendees since its release. With a budget of less than $10 million, Longlegs has already earned over $30 million in its first week at the box office. This would be impressive at any time of year, but it is particularly striking when the movie faced competition from summer blockbusters. The stellar central performances and Longlegs’ brutal twist ending combined to make it a must-see.

Related Does Longlegs Have A Post-Credits Scene? Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe's horror movie keeps the mystery until the end. Here's whether there is a Longlegs post-credits scene explaining more.

Longlegs' Critics Score On Rotten Tomatoes Is A New Record For Director Osgood Perkins

Longlegs Fared Better With Critics Than His 2015 Debut

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Fortunately for the director, both audiences and critics agree that Longlegs is Osgood Perkins’ best movie by far. Longlegs earned a superb 86% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 65% from audiences, which comfortably outdoes his previous best. 2015’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter was less divisive than Perkins’ later efforts, earning a respectable 75% from critics and a less impressive 51% from viewers. Since then, things got worse for the writer-director, whose atmospheric horror movies are an acquired taste even among seasoned reviewers. Their limited mainstream appeal was clear from audience scores.

I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House earned only 59% from viewers

Despite reuniting the director with The Blackcoat’s Daughter supporting star Lucy Boynton, I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House earned only 59% from viewers. 2020’s grim fairy tale retelling Gretel & Hansel fared slightly better with a critical rating of 62%, but this was still far from Perkins’ debut and nowhere near as good as Longlegs’ 86% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Longlegs was a step in a more accessible direction for Perkins, and the movie’s reception proves that the director might be better suited to mainstream fare than previously expected.

Gretel and Hansel got a meager 23% from viewers.

Longlegs Is Osgood Perkins' First Movie With A Fresh Audience Score On Rotten Tomatoes

Longlegs’ 64% Rating Easily Beats The Divisive Director’s Earlier Efforts

Although Longlegs succeeded with critics, the real test of its appeal comes in the movie’s audience reception. Ordinarily, a 65% audience rating wouldn’t be incredibly impressive on Rotten Tomatoes, although the site’s audience scores do tend to reject more experimental, avant-garde movies as a general rule. Perkins specifically seems to be a major victim of this, with I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House earning only 24%. Meanwhile, Gretel and Hansel got a meager 23% from viewers. The deliberately offbeat, unconventional aesthetic of these movies failed to find favor with most of the site’s users.

In contrast, Longlegs succeeded despite its strange story, unexplained mysteries, and occasional surreal flourishes. While Longlegs is hardly a straightforward police procedural, its clearer plotting and comparatively fast pace might account for its better audience reception. This all makes Perkins’ upcoming Stephen King adaptation The Monkey even more exciting, as Longlegs proves that the director can make conventional, accessible horror movies as well as trippier outings. King’s work can be nightmarishly bizarre, but his mainstream popularity initially made Perkins seem an unlikely choice for the movie.

Why Longlegs' Rotten Tomatoes Scores Are Better Than Osgood Perkins' Other Movies

The Serial Killer Thriller Is More Accessible

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While Longlegs is undeniably still strange and offbeat compared to most mainstream horror movies, it is also more conventional than Perkins’ earlier efforts. Ironically, some critics like RogerEbert.com's Brain Tallerico singled this out as the movie’s main fault, saying that leaning further into its implied Lynchian weirdness would have made for a more memorable cinematic trip into Hell. However, regardless of whether reviewers think Longlegs was right to clear up so many of its mysteries, the movie clearly resonated with viewers, judging by its box office performance and audience reviews.

Everything from Nicholas Cage’s Longlegs role to the movie's viral marketing campaign set the psychological horror up to be Perkins's break into the mainstream, and a comparison to his earlier Rotten Tomatoes scores proves how well this worked. With a plot that few could call pointless or confusing, a pace that didn’t drag out, and only a handful of unexplained enigmas, Longlegs dropped a lot of the elements that put viewers off Perkins’s earlier movies. In the process, Longlegs proved that its director could make an unlikely crowdpleaser, despite what his earlier efforts implied.