20 Incredible Modern Horror Movies That Came Out Of NOWHERE

13. Longlegs

It would’ve been easy to accuse Osgood Perkins of indirectly benefiting from nepotism to enter the horror space since his father was late Psycho star Anthony Perkins.

That is, until Osgood silenced skeptics with 2015’s exceptionally chilling and thought-provoking The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Even so, neither it nor Perkins’ relatively under-the-radar successors – The Girl in the Photographs, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and Gretel & Hansel – could’ve predicted the powerhouse he’d have with psychological/supernatural serial killer scare fest Longlegs.

Basically, it blends elements of genre touchstones such as The Silence of the Lambs, Cure, and Prisoners with Perkins’ signature knack for folk horror eeriness, ambiguity, and subtlety. It’s not as masterfully done as those films, but it’s in the same orbit. With career-best performances from Maika Monroe, Alicia Witt, and especially Nicolas Cage, Longlegs was arguably 2024’s biggest horror surprise.

The fact that Longlegs earned roughly 13x its budget by the end of its theatrical run is proof positive that the film caught fire, just as the sustained use of Cage’s immediately iconic villain in GIFs, memes, and the like demonstrates his enduring pop culture cachet.

Ironically, though, Longlegs being Perkins’ breakthrough movie meant that his 2025 follow-up duo of The Monkey and Keeper were almost destined to disappoint. 

Hopefully, he’ll have another runaway hit before too long.