Longlegs is terrifying, but it’s even scarier when you learn the bleak ending’s true meaning

Longlegs was my most anticipated film of 2024, and even with my expectations in the rafters it managed to knock it out of the park in every sense. Oz Perkins has created a masterpiece, a truly unsettling and unholy sink into despair where even when the film manages to have you darkly laughing the world feels like there’s no respite. Maika Monroe and Nic Cage are a revelation, but the star of Longlegs is the harrowing atmosphere and the lingering omnipresence of satanic evil – it truly feels hopeless. The ending of Longlegs is bleak, but the film only gets more scary when you get a true grip and understanding on the ambiguous ending of the film explained.

Spoilers for Longlegs ahead – here’s an explained rundown of what makes the ending and the film in general just so bloody terrifying.

‘Evil isn’t going anywhere’

The harrowing third act of Longlegs sees Lee Harker have to face off against the accomplice who’s been helping Longlegs do the murders across the last 30 years. The movie goes full throttle into genuine satanic supernatural, with possessed dolls and magic infiltrating the families targeted by Longlegs and Lee Harker is actually right in the middle of it. And her psychic abilities are all connected too.

The most heartbreaking reveal of the film comes as Lee’s mum is revealed to be the woman helping Longlegs massacre. He would make the haunted dolls, and Lee’s mum would pose as a nun and drop the doll in with the targeted family and the doll would compel the father to murder the family and then himself. Lee’s mum does this after making a deal with Longlegs for him to spare Lee’s life when she encounters the terrifying killer as a child.

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After having a harrowing confrontation with her mum, Lee has to race to try and save her partner Agent Carter and his family from her mum and the legacy of Longlegs, but she’s too late. Carter goes nuts and murders his wife, and he’s about to kill his daughter too but Lee shoots him and then has to shoot her own mother. The only thing left to shoot is the haunted doll, but when Lee goes to finish it off she’s out of bullets. We are left with an ambiguous ending for Longlegs, and even when getting it explained we don’t know if Lee or Carter’s daughter get to safety. Maika Monroe seems to think nothing good comes from it.

Speaking to TIME, Monroe says “Evil isn’t going anywhere. That’s just the reality. There really is no end.” Bleak stuff.

Director Oz Perkins explained the dark twist that Harker’s mum was the accomplice and how it linked to his own upbringing, telling Hollywood Reporter “I try not to tell my children any protective lies, having grown up in a family where certain truths were curated, not maliciously and with any kind of cruelty or dismissiveness, but rather as a move to sustain the family and keep things together.

“So the idea that a mom, in this case, can create a story, a lie, a narrative, a version and dress their children in it like a hazmat suit, is definitely where the movie came from. That’s the kernel of truth that started the process.”

The true terror of Longlegs comes all in that final look from Lee Harker as her bullets don’t come and she is fully helpless. Some interpreted it as an indicator she’d become possessed by the doll and be a pawn for Satan like Dale Cobble was and become the new Longlegs mantle legacy. Oz Perkins has detailed how he feels about the ending of Longlegs and explained why it’s so important, and harrowing.

“The ending for her is about as bad as it could have turned out,” he told Den of Geek. “Like shooting her mom in the head, that’s about as bad a day as a person can have. So I think that ultimately one could say that the entire movement of the movie—or the entire movement of all of Longlegs’ crimes, starting from crime number one all the way to the Carter family—it’s all about getting this poor girl to a place where she shoots her mom in the head. Like that’s kind of the flourish, the devil’s ‘Yep, I did that.'”

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