Despite competition from family-friendly summer films, low-budget horror Longlegs has made $22.6m at the US box office.
While animated sequel Despicable Me 4 was the biggest film at the US box office over the weekend, arguably the bigger story was the success of indie horror, Longlegs.
Writer-director Osgood Perkins’ 90s-set serial killer film made $22.6m on its debut weekend – the highest debut ever for boutique production company and distributor Neon, whose previous movies include Anatomy Of A Fall and Parasite.
Longlegs' earnings are all the more impressive given that it isn’t a sequel, it’s an R-rated movie with some distinctly un-commercial (you could almost say arthouse) elements tucked away, and that it was made on a relatively low budget. Variety reports that it was made for ‘under $10m’ and that around the same sum was spent on marketing. Hollywood journo Daniel Richtman, meanwhile, has suggested its budget may have been as low as $3m.
Read more: Longlegs review | Brace yourself for an outlandish, atmospheric serial killer horror
Hugely positive early reviews certainly helped Longlegs' cause, but it’s the film’s marketing that most likely helped push it over the top. From some superbly-cut trailers that avoided giving away too much – Perkins himself was behind the decision to keep Nicolas Cage’s eerie title character out of the promos – to tantalising viral websites and billboard posters, Longlegs has had an eye-catching build-up to its release.
About a solitary FBI agent (Maika Monroe) on the trail of a killer who indirectly murders entire families in their homes, Longlegs is essentially a boldly disturbing mood piece in the guise of a conventional thriller. That a film so infested with nihilistic dread is currently sandwiched between the pastel colours of Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 at the US box office would no doubt amuse Cage’s titular serial killer no end.
