Longlegs (2024 Film)

Submission 927

About

Longlegs is a 2024 horror film directed by Oz Perkins, starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage. The movie follows a half-psychic FBI agent tasked with tracking down an occultist killer named Longlegs, only to realize that she has a personal connection to him from a forgotten past. Following the release of the film, a screengrab showing agent Lee Harker (played by Monroe) gasping as she looks out a window came to be used as an image macro meme, while mentions of birthdays on the 14th of any month also became the subject of memes referencing the movie.

Origin

A trailer for the 2024 horror film Longlegs was posted to NEON's YouTube^[1] channel on May 20th, 2024, gathering over 12 million views in a month (seen below).

The movie follows a young female FBI agent tasked with investigating a Satanic killer who kills families with children born around the 14th of a month. As she continues to uncover more details, sometimes using her psychic intuition, she comes to realize that Longlegs, the killer, has a connection to her past.

In July 2024, memes using a still of Maika Monroe gasping as she looks out the window began making the rounds online. The earliest known meme featuring the image is a July 13th, 2024, post by X^[2] user @FinalDude78, gathering over 12,000 likes on a post that read, "that feeling when friends or family show up at your home unannounced."

Spread

On July 13th, 2024, more memes about Longlegs began making the round online. X^[3] user @prasejeebus posted a joke that read, "The realization that multiple $15 credit card transactions add up," gathering over 228,000 likes in three days (seen below, left). Meanwhile, X^[4] user @jordanpeelefan's post about Donald Trump's birthday being on the 14th of June, a reference to a plot point in the film, gathered over 35,000 likes in three days (seen below, right).

On July 14th, NEON shared a poster for Longlegs that called it the "#1 Movie In America," with a line that read, "Behind Despicable Me 4." The poster was parodied by X user @slshers,^[5] who edited it to depict a minion (seen below).