How Lord of the Rings, The Lord's Prayer, David Lynch & glam rock inspired Longlegs’ sound design

It’s got evil dolls. Satanic worship. The FBI. Clairvoyance. Nuns. Occult symbols. A complicated mother-daughter relationship. Mysterious orbs. A deal with the devil. Subliminal messages. A string of baffling murder-suicides. A rockin’ ‘70s soundtrack and Nicolas going full Cage. What’s not to like? A beautiful nightmare of a horror film, Longlegs flickered onto screens this summer following a truly unsettling marketing campaign, and before long had become Neon's highest-grossing film after surpassing the film production company’s earnings for 2019's multiple Oscar-winning Parasite, also snatching the crown of the highest-grossing independent film of 2024.

Appealing to fans of Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, Zodiac and Mindhunter, the American horror-thriller that is sure to traumatise anyone born on the 14th of the month for a long time to come was written and directed by Osgood (Oz) Perkins and stars Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt. 

Set in the ‘90s, the film follows FBI agent Lee Harker (Monroe), as she attempts to track down an occultist serial killer (Cage) responsible for murdering multiple families throughout the state of Oregon, despite not being physically present when the crimes took place.

As nightmarish as he looks, (the director takes care not to fully reveal its powder-faced titular character, Longlegs, until well into the narrative), it’s nothing compared to how he who serves “the man downstairs”, and the film, sounds. Indeed, anyone watching Longlegs cannot fail to notice the positively unhinged sound design, which is an unholy character of its own, and one that made a lasting impression from the very first teaser trailer, which simply featured a wholesome family photo interspersed with subliminal flashing images and a 911 call from a father who claims his daughter is not his own.

“The marketing campaign was probably the best marketing campaign I've ever seen in my life,” nods Eugenio Battaglia, sound designer, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer for Longlegs.

The marketing campaign that preceded the film’s release was a stroke of genius. Those picking up the Seattle Times would have noticed a half page ad made up of a cryptic Zodiac killer-like code ‘printed at the request of Longlegs,’ while prominent billboards teased a glimpse of a prosthetics-faced Cage as the film’s camp, ghoulish villain, accompanied by a code or a phone number (those brave enough to dial heard Longlegs singing happy birthday). 

Those that cracked the Seattle Times’ code were led to a ‘90s-looking true crime website dedicated to the story of Longlegs’ victims, all part of the so-called ‘Birthday Murders,’ while another teaser trailer showed how high Monroe’s heart rate spiked when she saw Cage as Longlegs in their first scene together.

A job well done, the film was adequately hyped to be the scariest horror film of the decade, and certainly, the most terrifying horror movie of 2024. The audio plays a starring role that’s almost as erratic as Longlegs himself. A masterclass in sound design, the audio blends guttural demonic utterances with subliminal sounds, expertly crafted to set nerves jangling.

“I'm actually surprised by how little cred sound gets in horror films, because it's absolutely crucial,” says Battaglia. “Of course, in any other genre, sound is important, but a lot of the time it has a backing role, but in horror, it's so front and centre all the time. If you grab a horror film and use a normal track that's not intense, it basically becomes a comedy, right?”

The idea behind Longlegs’ unusual appearance (and penchant for breaking out into song) alludes to his backstory as a former glam rocker. The film’s ‘70s-esque opening title sequence hints at this by featuring a song by the famously flamboyant rock band, T.Rex. Battaglia explains how director Perkins, after listening to T.Rex while writing the film, described his vision of giving the horror flick a ‘70s rock and roll vibe:

“He showed me the film, and he wanted to see what I thought about it first,” he recalls. “The first thing I thought was that I wanted to do something subliminal because of the mind control aspect to the film. When I said that to him, he really liked it. He likes horror films, but he doesn't like to treat them as horror films. He gets inspired by other films that are not horror. 

"He mentioned to me that he wanted the film to have a rock and roll feel. I wasn't expecting that because when I first saw it, there was no indication yet that a T.Rex song was in it and that Longlegs was supposed to be a rock and roll artist in the past. I quite liked that he said that because it went really well with my idea of trying to do something subliminal, because of the whole backmasking vibe of ‘70s records.”

As it happens, both men are huge fans of surrealist director, David Lynch. “I mentioned to him how Eraserhead is my favourite film,” he grins. “It was the same for him. So we were both like, ‘Okay, we're gonna make a very Lynch soundtrack!’”.

Battaglia’s woozy sound design leaves the viewer in a constant sense of anxiety, which was achieved in part due to the subliminal messages incorporated into the audio. Battaglia reveals that he essentially “became” Longlegs while recording himself whispering into a 360 ambisonic microphone (although he had some fun with it by saying things like, ‘Give us a good review on Rotten Tomatoes’ – it worked!) and then reversing it.

“I did a lot of reversing of a lot of elements,” he says. “A lot of it was me whispering stuff into this mic. I made a sound palette of whispers, then reversed them, and then I used them for whooshes to go around your head. The crazier ideas that I used a couple times was from me doing a deep dive on back-masking Satan and satanic stuff on records. I read that apparently, if you reverse the Lord's Prayer, it's a way to summon demons,” he discloses. 

“So in my insane mind, I thought it would be a good idea to summon demons across America and in theatres. To go the extra mile, I had an actual priest say The Lord’s Prayer in a temple and then I fuzzed it so it sounds like it's coming out of a speaker. I blended that with a bunch of 911 calls for that one scene and with the doll and – spoiler alert! – Longlegs blowing a kiss at the end. Those two are more intense, dreadful sonic moments, so I thought that would be a good spot to use it.”

During the hunt for the killer, a disarmingly lifelike doll is discovered by Harker, and is found to contain a metallic orb inside its head – the ramifications of which won’t become clear until later. The silver orbs are subsequently revealed to contain Longlegs' Satanic orders, which influence each father presented with a doll to kill his own family. Battaglia reveals his unlikely source of inspiration for the sound of the orb: the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings.

“A huge inspiration for me was The Lord of the Rings,” he enthuses. “The Eye of Sauron reminds me of this magic orb; it calls to them, and it was very distinct, evil whisper stuff. I'm a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings, so in my mind, it was him touching the orb. When I put the windscreen on my mic, it even looks like an orb, so I did the sounds with that, and that's throughout the whole movie.”

Unbeknownst to her, Harker is connected to the killer and experiences numerous visions, which Battaglia hinted at by clanking metal balls together to suggest the idea of an old film projector. Later, Longlegs declares that he serves “the man downstairs,” which saw Battaglia record himself running up and down his stairs at home which he then layered with some bass sounds and reversed to create a claustrophobic heart-pounding effect.

The film's score was composed by Zilgi, a pseudonym for Elvis Perkins (the brother of the film's director), who unusually, handed Battaglia the raw audio files for him to work with. In particular, this helped to create a subliminal suggestion that Lee is somehow connected to Longlegs.

“The composer gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted with his music, which is so rare – he gave me a great score,” he smiles. “On top of that, he gave me the raw materials and he said, ‘If you want to use them for anything, go ahead’. When we were mixing, myself and Oz thought it would be cool to grab some parts of his music and reverse them completely. So if you hear the film in reverse, you're going to hear a bunch of the score the way it was actually recorded, which I thought was pretty neat. 

"The main link that I used to hint at a link to him was me pretending to be him by taking a mic and whispering her name, which is a bit more prominent in the scenes where she's turning around and actually hearing whispers. There's a lot of him saying her name and trying to reach out to her, and because I also wanted the whole film to feel like the crackling of a record, I put a towel on top of my mic and massaged it on the windscreen, which makes kind of a record crackle sound.”

After watching the film, those rewatching the trailer will make sense of the fragmented clips and images featured, perhaps even wondering how they didn’t piece vital clues together from the teasers alone. Battaglia admits that he in turn worried that the sonic clues he embedded in the sound design might be too obvious to a viewer keen to work out any twists, and that they would guess early on that Harker’s mother had a bigger part to play.

“Now when I see the film, it's super obvious and I'm like, ‘I wonder if I went too obvious.’ But no one has mentioned that, so I guess not! When Lee talks to her mother on the phone, we layered the recordings of the director who did a temp recording of him pretending to be Satan. He did a really creepy little voice, so I blended that in between her lines. 

"It's very subtle and it blends really well with the static of the phone, but when I hear it now in theatres, I hear right away and I'm like, ‘Oh God, I'm giving away the secret so early!’. If you watch it again, definitely keep an ear for the phone calls. When she takes a break, you hear these creepy devil voices.”

In one scene, Longlegs drives away from a hardware store after creeping out a young girl, where he goes from looking stupefied, to suddenly half singing, half screaming, “Daddy! Mummy! Un-make me. And save me from the hell of living,” which ends in an inhuman-sounding scream.

“That one was cool because Oz was wanting me to make him sound glam – that was his note,” shares Battaglia with a grin. “I thought it was a bit challenging, because how do I make someone sound glam? What makes someone sound glam? Incredible vocals – which Nic Cage doesn't have. I mean, he has a pretty great singing voice,” he clarifies quickly, “but it's not high pitched or anything that sounds glam."

While going through some sound files, he stumbled upon a guitar solo that he tried out: "It was kind of a happy accident, but that fit really well with the frequency of his voice. I slapped a guitar in there, pitched it to get closer to his voice and it transitioned very well from his voice to a really high guitar solo. It sounds like he's tapping into some demonic power. It's actually my favourite moment of the film, that scream.”

Longlegs himself doesn’t feature in the film’s trailers aside from brief glimpses and hearing his disembodied voice, and he is largely absent from the film until he is captured by the FBI. In the film’s opening scene where he visits Harker as a child, he is so far away in the shot you couldn’t be certain you actually saw him, (although you can be sure you heard a softly uttered, “Cuckoo”). 

When he suddenly appears next to the young girl, there’s a sharp cut to the lower half of his face, open mouthed and horrific in the snow, accompanied by a jarring orchestral burst. Battaglia explains how he built a sense of tension and fear about the unseen Longlegs using sound.

“It's what inspired me to try to pretend to be him while playing with the microphone,” he explains. “I mean, no one can really know what it feels like to be in Nic Cage's shoes – nor should they,” he laughs, “but it was definitely a funny attempt. 

"Once you reveal him during the middle of the movie, that suspension of disbelief drops a bit so I don't play with that as much then. During the first part of the film, I'm trying to give him more of a mystical sound palette, and that's why most of the whispers are more heavy handed during the first part.”

Battaglia makes the sound its own character throughout the film, fluctuating the audio levels to help the audience feel like they were in Harker’s shoes. He explains his sonic choices in an unbearably tense scene when Longlegs visits an adult Harker at her isolated home after she speaks to her mother on the phone. At this point, Harker makes the horror movie mistake of going outside to investigate a suspicious sound.

“She gets out of her car and slams the door, and I went incredibly hard on the car door slam. I actually was a bit worried about how loud I went on it,” he admits, “but I basically wanted to keep this scene quiet and jarring. The neighbours (or you don’t know if it’s Longlegs) have some sort of weird music playing, so that’s such a weird sound to hear. I wanted to keep that tension throughout because when he comes, he knocks on the door, then she comes out, and then he's inside, so it's not like anything crazy is happening visually. 

"I wanted to keep people really tense throughout. You have the phone call with her mother and hear those whispery things that I mentioned earlier, so right away you think, ‘That's kind of weird’. From there on, it's just pure silence. You hear the creaking of the floor, the buzzing of the lamps. It’s a heightened state and that helps portray the anxiety that she has. 

"Maika Monroe did such a great job of getting you stressed out with her performance, because she's tense all the time, so her anxiety transfers to you. By the time he hits the door and you see him outside, it’s super loud and your defences are so down that any sound can be startling.”

The sound design was done at Battaglia’s personal studio, and the mixing was done at a professional stage called DBC in Vancouver BC Canada. “The most important thing for me was to get a sense of dynamics,” he explains about the mix stage of the project. “When I sound design films, I like to go a little bit over the top, so I over sound design, and from there, it's a subtractive thing. Oz likes to carve moments out to make space for silence, so most of the mix was trying to choose those strategic moments.”

Battaglia used Genelec studio monitors for the surround speakers and his colleague and business partner Humberto Corte, who was the sound effects editor on the film, also used an all Genelec system while editing the audio for Longlegs.

“I've used Genelecs for 13 years now,” shares Battaglia about his preferred studio setup. “I just know that they are going to translate well everywhere. They're the industry standard, but also they were very compact. For a small speaker, I can get a pretty big sound, and I know that I can trust in the sound. It also helps that I know how they sound because I’ve had them for so long. 

"In terms of frequency response and clarity, they're pretty much top. When we went to the mix stage theatre, they had this huge Atmos theatre with Genelecs everywhere. You go to any mix stage and they'll have Genelecs because it's the industry standard. 

"My sound effects editor and business partner also has an all-Genelec studio using DSP to calibrate the room. He has a pretty neat app that comes with them where you can control the level of your whole system. They're very practical and very reliable.”

Longlegs is streaming now on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Google Play Movies. Watch it not once, not twice, but as many times as you like.

Longlegs images courtesy of NEON