
Perkins is upfront about his own relationship with death; his father, “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins, died from an AIDS-related illness when Osgood was young. And his mother, actor Berry Berenson, died when she was a passenger on one of the flights involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It’s given Perkins a perspective – and humor – that is evident in his film. “I’m certainly writing from an autobiographical place, given that I sustained some pretty insane kind of deaths in my life,” he admits. “I think that if I had written this movie when I was 29, it would have been pretty sad. But now that I’m 51, it’s a pretty funny movie. Time changes everything, it breaks it all down like a silt in a riverbed. If I was going to give a movie about death to an audience, I wasn’t going to hand them a bummer – I was going to hand a delight, an opportunity to shake it off and have a smile.”Perkins began his career as an actor, playing a young Norman Bates in “Psycho II”; he’s perhaps best remembered as the awkward law student David in “Legally Blonde.” He does appear in a cameo in “The Monkey” as the weird uncle who takes in the twins after their parents’ deaths even though, by his own account, “I’m kind of a shitty actor.” (Those who have caught his clever promotional videos for “The Monkey” may disagree.) He pivoted into filmmaking with his 2015 debut “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” carving out an admirable niche for himself in the horror genre with films like “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.” But it was 2024’s “Longlegs,” the indie thriller starring Nicolas Cage as an unsubtle serial killer taunting FBI agent Maika Monroe that made Hollywood take notice, grossing over $125 million worldwide on a $9 million budget.It was unexpected to the director, who felt he was making a very specific movie for people like himself. “The success of ‘Longlegs’ was a shock. It’s an offbeat movie and the demographic is for weird people,” he notes, largely crediting distributor Neon, which is releasing his latest film. “They were able to position it in a way that was like a work of art. I say it to them all the time: ‘I made the movie. You guys made the movie a hit.’ I don’t know how that shit happens, but for some reason it crossed over.”
What does that mean for the auteur’s career? “It’s changed everything and nothing,” he says. “It’s given me confidence, but it’s not like I’m going to run off and make a video game movie or an X-Men movie. I don’t think anybody wants that.” So what can people expect going forward from Perkins? “You can probably just expect more of the same from me, but just made better.”