With The Monkey releasing to predominantly favorable reviews, there’s never been a better time to go back and look at the films that helped spur director Osgood Perkins to success. Stephen King’s book version of “The Monkey” is a more straightforward horror story than Perkins’ new horror comedy, and The Monkey’s ending bears little relation to the original short story. Interestingly enough, previous films in Perkins’ career suggest he might have once written a more traditional take on the story, as his reputation definitely hasn’t been built on laughs.
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Osgood Perkins’ films are mostly known for their incredibly striking visuals and often rather heavy themes. As evidenced by the caliber of The Monkey’s cast, Perkins also has a keen eye for talent. But while Perkins definitely has a few particular stylistic elements he leans on frequently, his directorial style differs in key ways from one film to the next. This leads to a number of great successes as well as a few visual and story beats that aren’t always quite as well-received.
You are watching: Every Osgood Perkins Movie, Ranked Worst To Best
I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House
The Most Literary Ghost Who Ever Stopped Living
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I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
See more : Ride On 2023 Movie Ending Explained, Ride On movie Review, Cast, Plot, And More
Horror
Mystery
3/10
Release Date
October 28, 2016
Runtime
89 Minutes
Cast
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Ruth Wilson
Lily
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Paula Prentiss
Iris Blum
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is a horror film directed by Osgood Perkins. The story follows a live-in nurse named Lily (Ruth Wilson), who moves into a haunted house to care for an elderly author suffering from dementia. As Lily becomes more familiar with the house, she begins to unravel its unsettling and ghostly past.
Director
Osgood Perkins
Writers
Osgood Perkins
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There are plenty of horror movies about isolation, but few evoke the aura of Gothic literature quite like I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. The film focuses on Ruth Wilson’s Lily, a caretaker assigned to aging horror writer Iris. When Lily begins reading one of her charge’s old books, she comes to the conclusion that Iris was writing about an actual murder. The book’s subject, Polly, meanwhile continues to haunt the house as a ghost. It’s a fairly straightforward plot with a lot of room to expand. It’s also Perkins’ worst-received film, and for good reason.
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Many of the critics accounting for I Am the Pretty Thing’s 59% Rotten Tomatoes score take issue with the film’s thin plot and incredibly slow pacing. The movie’s entire story could be effectively told in a 10-minute short film, but Perkins’ script pads the runtime with deceptively shallow narration and attempts to build tension. Slow-burn horror movies certainly have their place, with films like Rosemary’s Baby and Hereditary standing out as particularly worthy examples. But while the tension building in those films ultimately pays off, I Am the Pretty Thing ends rather anticlimactically not long after Lily sees the ghost.
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On the plus side, there’s absolutely no denying the film’s visual beauty. Sets, wardrobe, and cinematography all blend together to bless the film with a deliciously gothic atmosphere. Pretty Thing is also the movie that establishes Perkins’ ongoing love for experimenting with the rule of thirds, a principle of shot composition that his prior film The Blackcoat’s Daughter played with to a slightly lesser degree. I Am the Pretty Thing may be widely accepted as Perkins’ weakest film, but it’s nonetheless an important footnote in his evolution as a director.
Gretel & Hansel
A Unique Take On A Storybook Classic
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Gretel & Hansel
PG-13
See more : Ride On 2023 Movie Ending Explained, Ride On movie Review, Cast, Plot, And More
Horror
5/10
2/10
Release Date
January 30, 2020
Runtime
87 minutes
Cast
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Sophia Lillis
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Alice Krige
Gretel & Hansel is a dark fantasy horror film directed by Oz Perkins. It retells the classic Grimm Brothers’ fairytale, focusing on teenage Gretel and her younger brother Hansel, who embark on a perilous journey into a haunted forest. Sophia Lillis stars as Gretel, while Alice Krige plays Holda, a witch who lures the siblings into her sinister home. The film delves into themes of survival and dark magic in a visually eerie setting.
Director
Oz Perkins
Writers
Rob Hayes
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Perkins’ third film, Gretel & Hansel, is possibly one of his most difficult to assess. While it holds his second-lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of 63% (with an even more abysmal 23% audience score), it also gets a lot of things right that his previous films didn’t. The story is told more coherently, the actors are more expressive (albeit with distractingly unmatching accents for brother and sister), and Gretel & Hansel boasts some of the most distinctive visuals of Perkins’ filmography. But despite a rather unique take on the classic story, the film’s plot ultimately falls miles short of its potential.
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Setting itself apart from the majority of horror movies based on Hansel and Gretel, Perkins’ film establishes Gretel as a budding witch herself. Rather than taking the children prisoner outright, the evil witch in the film actually seeks to train Gretel’s powers until the two are set at odds on whether Gretel’s love for her brother is holding her back. There’s a lot that could be done with this premise. But rather than learn from Pretty Thing’s criticisms, Perkins again inflates the runtime with scenes that ultimately have little bearing on the film’s climax.
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There are also some issues with the film’s aesthetic. The production design and cinematography are beautiful, but the shot composition often feels repetitive for its tendency to frame subjects in the precise center (and often from the exact same distance). Gretel & Hansel also attempts to evoke the feeling of reading pages from a picture book by shooting in a 1.55:1 aspect ratio, despite going widescreen for the one scene that’s actually presented as an in-universe fairy tale. Perkins’ ideas aren’t entirely illogical, but the end result simply feels like watching a director try to feel artistic.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter
Twisting The Concept Of Love And Loss
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The Blackcoat’s Daughter
9/10
Release Date
September 30, 2016
Runtime
93 minutes
Director
Osgood Perkins
Cast
-
Emma Roberts
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Kiernan Shipka
Girls Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton) are left alone in a Bramford prep boarding school during the winter holidays when their parents mysteriously fail to pick them up. While they experience increasingly strange events at the isolated school, the film shows another story – that of Joan (Emma Roberts), a troubled young woman on the road who, for reasons unknown, needs to get to Bramford as quickly as possible. As Joan gets closer to the school, Kat is tormented by increasingly horrifying visions.
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Osgood Perkins’ directorial debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, was also his first Certified Fresh rating with 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. Although it’s clear that he’s still getting his sea legs under him, Perkins’ love of heavy themes and discomforting shot composition both begin to present themselves here. The Blackcoat’s Daughter examines grief through a horror lens by telling its story from the perspective of a possessed young woman who comes to yearn for her demon after a successful exorcism. It’s an intriguing idea, but the manner in which it’s presented can be a bit isolating for casual viewers.
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The film’s characters rarely state what they’re thinking, which necessitates paying keen attention since the three main characters are all keeping secrets. This is most prominent in the final scene, which might lose viewers who don’t watch horror to engage in deep media analysis. That said, A24 horror movies aren’t unknown for occasionally making the audience think, and The Blackcoat’s Daughter gets a little stronger with every repeat viewing. Something as simple as a scene of Lucy Boynton (who would later play the ghost in I Am the Pretty Thing) passing a sleeping student grows in significance with every rewatch.
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Although the actors aren’t as expressive as in Gretel & Hansel, this actually works in the movie’s favor. Boynton makes several subtle acting choices befitting a character trying to mask her fear of having her pregnancy discovered, and Kiernan Shipka is the film’s trophy-winning tension builder with an eerily unmoving gaze that makes it hard at times to believe the screen isn’t frozen. And given how the film’s shifting timeline factors to The Blackcoat’s Daughter’s ending, Emma Roberts’ performance complements Shipka’s perfectly. The film’s execution is far from flawless, but it’s jaw-dropping as a director’s first outing.
The Monkey
Horror Comedy With A Heavy Theme
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The Monkey
R
See more : Ride On 2023 Movie Ending Explained, Ride On movie Review, Cast, Plot, And More
Horror
Comedy
6/10
10/10
Release Date
February 19, 2025
Runtime
98 Minutes
Cast
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Theo James
Hal / Bill
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Tatiana Maslany
Lois
The Monkey is a horror film following twin brothers Hal and Bill, who uncover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, triggering a series of gruesome deaths.
Writers
Osgood Perkins
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Viewers would never peg The Monkey as Perkins’ first foray into horror comedy, with the film delivering nearly non-stop laughs the entire way through. The film goes so off the rails that even Stephen King’s review of The Monkey strikes a far more positive tone than his responses to past adaptations like Children of the Corn or The Shining. The film’s opening scene ends with Adam Scott wielding a flamethrower against an unmoving children’s toy, and things somehow only get zanier as the titular plaything causes increasingly ludicrous freak accidents everywhere it goes.
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There will inevitably be comparisons between The Monkey and Final Destination, but their themes couldn’t be more opposed. While the latter is all about escaping fate, The Monkey’s recurring theme is that life and death are irreparably unpredictable. The film’s first act delivers laughs nearly all the way through, but the theme arises when the comedy is interrupted by one heartbreaking death played completely straight. Every serious moment in the film traces back to this, and the performances by Theo James and Tatiana Maslany as his disillusioned mother balance the theme’s gravity with the film’s more comedic elements almost perfectly.
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Perkins doesn’t utilize his aesthetic prowess quite as much in this film, with most of the more intriguing visuals compacted into a single sequence following a predictable third-act twist. The script’s also not without issue. Characters such as an early scene’s funeral priest and a group of death-loving cheerleaders are ceaselessly hilarious, but they’re also so outlandishly unlike how any real person would behave that they don’t balance well with The Monkey’s more down-to-earth moments. But for any flaws in execution, The Monkey still earns its 80% Rotten Tomatoes score with the surprising amount of heart beneath its comedy.
Longlegs
Slow-Burn Tale Of A Bizarre FBI Investigation
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Longlegs
R
See more : Ride On 2023 Movie Ending Explained, Ride On movie Review, Cast, Plot, And More
Horror
Thriller
7/10
12
7.8/10
Release Date
July 12, 2024
Runtime
101 Minutes
Cast
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Maika Monroe
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Nicolas Cage
Longlegs is a horror thriller film by writer-director Osgood Perkins. When FBI agent Lee Harker is assigned to a serial killer cold case, their investigation leads them down a rabbit hole riddled with disturbing discoveries and the occult at the center of it all. When the trail of evidence reveals a personal connection, it becomes a race against time to prevent another murder.
Director
Oz Perkins
Writers
Oz Perkins
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Although Longlegs’ tale of the FBI’s investigation into a seemingly supernatural killer didn’t earn Perkins his highest audience rating, it remains his biggest critical success on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 86%. This isn’t entirely surprising given frequent comparisons between Longlegs and The Silence of the Lambs, but the film stands on its own merit. Longlegs contains some of the most effective cinematography among any of Perkins’ films, along with a standout performance by Nic Cage that’s only complemented by the fact that his makeup design is somehow more unsettling that that of the witch in Gretel & Hansel.
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The script maintains wall-to-wall tension better than any of Perkins’ prior films. There are a couple of phone calls that initially feel like wasted screentime, but they ultimately set up a relationship dynamic that plays a prominent role in Longlegs’ twist ending. And between moments where Cage is almost too unhinged for words and the revelation that protagonist Lee Harker’s mom still hoards her daughter’s baby teeth, Longlegs is the first subtle indication of Perkins’ comedic ability. And these moments somehow land even better against Maika Monroe’s straight-laced performance injecting anxiety into practically every scene.
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Perkins also accomplishes some of his best foreshadowing in this movie. Even Longlegs’ opening quote hints subtly at the film’s final moments, and Longlegs’ religious symbolism is used much more effectively than in The Blackcoat’s Daughter despite the latter taking place primarily in a religious setting. Like every other Perkins film before The Monkey, Longlegs is still very much a slow burn. But its story plays out so enticingly in almost every respect that it never actually feels slow. It’s an accomplishment one can only hope Osgood Perkins will be able to replicate in his future films.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House/Gretel & Hansel/The Blackcoat’s Daughter/The Monkey/Longlegs)
Source: https://dinhtienhoang.edu.vn
Category: Entertainment