Diksha Sundriyal
Osgood Perkins’ ‘Longlegs’ follows the story of Lee Harker, an FBI agent who tries to catch the eponymous serial killer who has been killing people for a very long time. She is brought on the case due to her highly intuitive nature, but as she digs into it, she discovers a terrifying connection she has with Longlegs. She is convinced that while it might seem like it, he doesn’t commit the murders alone. He has an accomplice or more, and somehow, custom-made dolls are used to initiate the events that end with the father killing his entire family. For Lee, the plot thickens when Longlegs is arrested and kills himself following an interrogation with her. It is only after his death the entire truth comes to light. SPOILERS AHEAD
Why did Lee’s Mother Help Longlegs?
While investigating the murders, Lee finds several baffling things about the case. Even though Longlegs leaves a note and claims to be the culprit following each murder, there is nothing to prove that he has ever been to the crime scenes. There is also the question of how he influences the fathers to kill their families in cold blood. One of the logical things to come out of the investigation is that there has to be an accomplice, which means that even though Longlegs has been arrested, there is no guarantee that the killings will stop until the accomplice has been apprehended.
In hindsight, there are several clues to the identity of the accomplice before their identity is revealed, but that doesn’t do anything to make things any less shocking. In the interrogation, Longlegs tells Lee to ask her mother, Ruth, about the killings and even mentions how they had a long laugh about it when she chose to have a career in law enforcement. Lee knew that her mother kept it a secret from her that she was almost targeted by Longlegs and had been keeping things from her all these years. While she tries to protect her mother in the beginning, she knows that Ruth must be brought in for questioning. However, when she goes back to the house, things turn awry.
Ruth, dressed as a nun, kills Agent Browning, who accompanies Lee to her house, confirming that she has been the accomplice all along. When Lee tries to stop her, Ruth shoots a doll made by Longlegs in Lee’s likeness, destroying the black orb in its head, of which black smoke comes out. At the same time, black smoke comes out of Lee’s head as well, and she falls unconscious. The destruction of the orb removes whatever has been blocking Lee’s memories, and she remembers the whole thing in complete detail.
She remembers meeting Longlegs outside her house before her birthday and her mom showing up just in time to prevent her from talking with the strange man. Later that night, Longlegs returns (which he had warned them about), but Ruth begs for Lee’s life, and Longlegs offers her a deal. In return for letting Lee live, Ruth will have to do the dirty work. She will have to take his dolls to the families, pretending to be a well-meaning nun who has brought a gift from the Church to them. Then, she will have to watch the family die and bring the doll back with her. To save her daughter, Ruth agrees to the deal and becomes the accomplice that, years later, her daughter chases after.
When Lee wakes up, she finds herself in the basement of her house, which is also where Longlegs had been holed up all this while. She receives a phone call, with Longlegs on the other end, reminding her that she is late for Miss Ruby’s birthday party, confirming that she and her family are the victims and the missing link of Longlegs’ inverted triangle algorithm, and her mother intends to finish it.
Why Couldn’t Lee Shoot the Doll? What Does Her Look in the End Mean?
Realizing what is about to happen, Lee rushes to Carter’s house but discovers that Ruth is already there with the doll. Carter, his wife, and Ruby are under the doll’s spell, and it seems that they have been waiting for Lee to show up. While Lee knows what is about to go down, she is still banged up from the doll thing and is processing the revelation about her mom being a killer’s accomplice for all these years. Her trauma keeps her from preventing Carter from killing his wife, but she forces her into action just in time to save his daughter. To protect her, she has to shoot Carter. If that wasn’t traumatizing enough, she also has to kill her mother, who decides to finish the job herself when Carter is indisposed.
Before taking Ruby away from the house, Lee aims her gun at the doll, but when she shoots, no bullets come out. It seems she has run out of bullets, but that’s surprising, considering that this is the first time she actually uses her gun, even though she has brandished it several times before. Her surprised reaction and continuing to pull the trigger shows that the gun has bullets, but they cannot be fired at the doll. This confirms the supernatural nature of the doll, and she realizes that it has a part of Longlegs inside it. This is what he meant when he told her that there is a little something of him out there everywhere.
On the surface, it seemed like he was talking about his accomplice(s), who would carry on his work. But now it’s clear that he actually did leave parts of him in the dolls. Extrapolating from this, it seems that the FBI was wrong when they thought Longlegs wasn’t there during the murders. In fact, he was there in the form of a doll, whispered all sorts of things to the families to have them under his spell, and made them do unspeakable things to each other. A detail that supports this theory is when, after his death, Ruth tells Lee that she has freed him.
This means that Longlegs was actually Satan, or was possessed by him, and had been in mortal form to carry out his nefarious plans. This also explains why he kills himself following his conversation with Lee. It seems that he has no use for his mortal coil anymore because he knows his plan will be fulfilled shortly. He only needed to kill one more family to complete his inverted triangle, and before he surrendered, he had already made the doll, and he knew that Ruth would take it to Carter’s house and get the job done.
What was Longlegs’ Real Plan for Lee Harker? Is She Possessed?
A more terrifying prospect is the reason behind Longlegs choosing Carter’s family as his next victim. Lee discovered this much later, but Longlegs had been living in her house in close vicinity to her all this while. He knew everything about her, and even though he could have easily killed her at any moment, he didn’t. When she becomes an FBI agent and is assigned to investigate his case, instead of trying to stop her, he helps her catch him. He gives her the key to his code, which no one had been able to crack all these years. It is after she reveals she can read his code that Carter looks into her file, finds out about her mother’s report from way back, and tells her to find out more about her past.
In some ways, it seems as if Longlegs had the whole thing planned because, as Carter said, the case had been stalled all these years, and with her in the picture, things just start to flow in the right direction. Longlegs’ surrender also makes sense in this context because if he wanted, he could have hidden in Lee’s house’s basement for much longer. No one would have thought about checking into Lee’s basement to find the killer, or at least it would have taken them longer to figure it out, considering that her mother would also keep quiet about the whole thing. Instead, Longlegs just packs his bags and waits for the cops to get him.
When arrested, Lee is the one Longlegs asks to see, and everything spills on her. He could have kept her mother’s connection a secret, but he pushes her in that direction as if he wanted Lee to go to the Carter house when the murder takes place. He wants her to be there with the doll, to witness the whole thing, which is exactly what he had wanted from Ruth when they made the deal all those years ago. All of this makes it seem like he had planned to have Lee take over the mantle, if not his, then Ruth’s, and continue his work.
What adds more meaning to this is how Lee looks at the doll in the end. We know that the doll had a way of getting inside the minds of its victims before it forced them to kill. In the final moments of the film, we see something similar happen to Lee. When her bullets fail her, she keeps looking at the doll, even as she tells Ruby that they are leaving the house. We never actually see her leave, but she continues to stare at the doll. It’s like staring into the abyss and being pulled towards it. Interestingly, when Lee picks up on the call at her house before she rushes to Carter’s place, the voice is Longlegs’, who is already dead. In the end, her staring at the doll is followed by the shot of Longlegs saying “Hail Satan” and acting as if things have happened exactly as he wanted. Does this mean that Lee is under his spell now?
What Happens to Ruby?
The ambiguous ending of ‘Longlegs’ gives the audience a lot to discuss, but all of that ambiguity could have been resolved by allowing the story to extend by one more minute and telling us what happens to Ruby. On the surface, it seems that Lee has saved her from being killed by her father, but does that really mean that Ruby will survive the day? Ruth seemed pretty adamant about killing her, going as far as to pull out a knife herself when Carter was out of the picture. According to Longlegs’ plan as well, the girl is supposed to die. Carrie-Anne was the only girl who didn’t die in all of his killings, but even she didn’t survive by the end of the film. She kills herself around the same time that Longlegs dies in the interrogation room. This means that no one is supposed to make it out alive, which makes Ruby an exception. That is unless Lee finishes the job.
If Lee really is under Longlegs’ influence now and will take up his mantle, then Ruby is the first one she will kill. It is curious that even though Lee knew what was about to happen at Carter’s house, she didn’t call for backup. They probably would have reached there earlier, or at least around the same time as her. With a backup, she could have prevented the whole thing, saving Carter and his wife. But not only is there no backup, but Lee is also pretty impassive while Carter is killing his wife. She is rooted to her spot even as she hears him chop his wife to pieces. It’s almost as if she lets the whole thing happen. Though her inaction could be attributed to her trauma and being in shock, considering all the things she’s experienced in the span of a day, it does make one wonder what she plans to do with Ruby and how the movie leaves the girl’s fate unresolved.
To stir the pot even more, the film credits actress Rryla Mcintosh as “Adult Ruby Carter,” which is interesting because the story doesn’t go as far to show us the grown-up version of Ruby, but it confirms that Ruby was meant to grow up, which leads us to another possibility. What if, as she stares at the doll and finds it speaking to her, Lee makes a deal with the devil to save Ruby, like her mother made with Longlegs to save her all those years ago? What if, in return for “allowing” Ruby to grow up, Lee has become an accomplice and will continue to do what Ruth did? What gives more legs to this theory is how Ruth talks about the reason she came to Carter’s house even when Longlegs is dead. She says if she doesn’t do it, they will burn in hell. As she speaks, it’s as if she is giving a blueprint to her daughter, showing her what she has been through all these years and what Lee must do and go through to keep Ruby alive. It would be easier for Lee to do it. Being an FBI agent makes her the perfect person that families would trust and allow to enter their homes without getting suspicious or worried about their safety.
Allowing ourselves to end things on a less violent note, we could imagine that Lee called for backup, and they arrived a bit late. In that case, Ruby would probably end up in a psychiatric hospital, like Carrie-Anne, because she has been through the same thing. Moreover, the doll is still intact, and as long as the black ball of its brain remains untouched, there is no cure for Ruby’s condition, just like there was no cure for Carrie-Anne’s condition for several years until her doll was found and Longlegs paid her a visit. Considering that Lee knows the significance of the ball, she might have it destroyed in the hopes that it would free Ruby of whatever spell she is under, and it might even work. But the poor girl would still need years of therapy to process what happened to her that day. In any case, things don’t look too good for Ruby.
Read More: Longlegs: Is the Horror Movie Based on True Events?
