It’s Time To Stop Comparing ‘Longlegs’ to ‘Silence of the Lambs’
Find a new comparison!
Longlegs, the latest horror flick to come out of indie production house Neon, is currently rocking the summer box office. But seriously, why are people so obsessed with comparing it to 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs?
Yes, the horror landscape has shifted a lot over the years, but one thing has remained the same: we all love a good old fashioned serial killer case. Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins (a.k.a. the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins), stars Maika Monroe as small-town FBI agent Lee Harker, a haunted husk of a human being who finds herself tasked with tracking down the perpetrator of the aptly-dubbed “Birthday Murders” after the killer (Nicolas Cage), who goes by the alias “Longlegs,” leaves her the code to his cipher.
It’s a slow-burn mind f*** that audiences are already deeming “the scariest movie of the year,” which … whatever. More importantly, Longlegs has been subjected to any number of comparisons by viewers, who are pointing out its ties to other famous horror-thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs—and here’s why they couldn’t be any more wrong.
A case for leaving The Silence of the Lambs out of your Longlegs analyses
Let’s get this out of the way: on a superficial level, there are shades of The Silence of the Lambs in Longlegs. Both movies follow the career-defining cases of two young FBI agents who happen to be women. Along the way, both protagonists develop a personal attachment to the investigation, leading to a climactic confrontation that somehow involves an unfinished basement. There’s more here than meets the eye, as evil is hardly contained to one person. This puts our leads in uncomfortable situations that will test their training—and moral judgement.
Personally speaking, I think The Silence of the Lambs is a perfect movie. It’s a tight 90 with masterful editing and the kind of bone-chilling, off-kilter performances that have cemented it as a staple of the genre. With this in mind, it was always going to be impossible for Longlegs to live up to these high expectations, but now that it’s out, I feel almost offended by the very thought that Longlegs is being dubbed “this generation’s The Silence of the Lambs.”
The Silence of the Lambs falls under a different subgenre
Comparing Longlegs to an Oscar-winning drama, as Neon seems to be leaning into, sets up unrealistic expectations, and most audiences agree that the film wasn’t nearly as scary as they’d anticipated. That’s because Longlegs falls somewhere in the middle of being a crime-thriller and supernatural horror, while The Silence of the Lambs is a slow-burn police procedural.
Of course, The Silence of the Lambs has elements of horror, and is—perhaps mistakenly—slotted in with the horror genre every time Halloween rolls around. But Longlegs fully transforms into a supernatural thriller about halfway through, so even though the film may start as a by-the-books police procedural, showing us the inner-workings of this rural FBI branch, it never fully commits to the subgenre like The Silence of the Lambs.
Longlegs isn’t nearly as patient with its storytelling
Where The Silence of the Lambs takes nearly its entire runtime to reach that climactic basement scene, Longlegs places us in its version right off the bat—and gives us another basement scene toward the end. So not only is the identity of the killer and his methods explained to us in the first act, but all in all, we barely spend any time with Longlegs himself.
This in and of itself is why it’s glaringly inaccurate to compare Longlegs to The Silence of the Lambs, which thoughtfully and meticulously gives us an intimate look at not one, but two of our villains: Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Throughout the film, we see Lecter in full master manipulator mode, getting under Clarice’s skin as she presses him for information, yet there’s depth to the character, which is why Clarice is ultimately spared following his escape.
Comparatively, Longlegs doesn’t really want us to get to know the titular villain and doesn’t even afford its protagonist the same luxury. It’s not a character study like The Silence of the Lambs is, as the murderer isn’t particularly interested in Lee, who has virtually no face-to-face interactions with Longlegs—he bashes his skull in mere minutes into their long-awaited reunion. This was intentional, as Perkins admitted to “borrowing” not from Silence of the Lambs but from the 1995 classic Seven, which barely shows Kevin Spacey’s killer onscreen.
The Silence of the Lambs is a scathing critique of the patriarchy while Longlegs examines neurodivergence
I get it: Lee Harker went to the Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) school of overachieving FBI agents. However, Silence of the Lambs is kind of a perfect critique of the patriarchy and a commentary on sexual harassment. It’s exhausting to be a woman, but even more exhausting—and isolating—to earn respect in a male-dominated field, and this is on display in the film at every turn.
Meanwhile, Longlegs spends its time essentially affirming the notion of the nuclear family as something to be protected—and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just different. Plus, if we’re really getting into it, where The Silence of the Lambs shows Clarice grappling with being a woman in a male-dominated workplace, Longlegs sees its protagonist navigating a neurotypical world—just pay attention to who actually makes eye contact with the camera throughout the movie.
Both characters are victims of a world that has oppressed them, but in drastically different ways.
In short, you can draw plenty of connections between The Silence and the Lambs and Longlegs, but just because E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Arrival both feature aliens communicating with humans, doesn’t mean they’re the same, or even similar. On a personal level, despite its shortcomings, I still want movies like Longlegs to succeed, but by comparing its story to Oscar-winning cult classics, you’re not doing it any favors.
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