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1. INTRODUCTION

In 1988, author Thomas Harris would write The Silence Of The Lambs which would be the second novel in the Hannibal book series and a sequel to his 1981 novel Red Dragon. In 1991, The Silence Of The Lambs would be adapted into a feature film starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins with Jonathan Demme as the director. The film would go on to be a huge success being one of three films to win The Big Five at the Academy Awards(1)(1.1). In 2024, filmmaker Osgood Perkins would write and direct a horror and crime film by the name of Longlegs. Longlegs was made with a $10M budget and would go on to make $109M worldwide becoming the highest grossing film that its production company, Neon ever released and it would also be the highest grossing indie film of the year(2). The Silence Of The Lambs and Longlegs are both very similar movies with Osgood Perkins even citing The Silence Of The Lambs as a source of inspiration(3). In this essay I will be analyzing and comparing both The Silence Of The Lambs and Longlegs seeing just how similar and different they are. There will also be spoilers for both The Silence Of The Lambs and Longlegs in this essay.

2. THE PLOT

The Silence Of The Lambs is about a young FBI trainee named Clarice Starling who is investigating a serial killer by the name of Buffalo Bill who kidnaps women, kills them, and skins them and during her investigation, she consults with Hannibal Lecter who is a psychiatrist and cannibal serial killer that was imprisoned for his crimes. Longlegs’ plot is pretty similar with it being about an FBI agent by the name of Lee Harker tracking down a serial killer by the name of Longlegs who somehow manages to kill families without ever being physically present.

Longlegs does differ from The Silence Of The Lambs in several ways though. For starters Lee Harker doesn’t consult another serial killer to help with her investigation and she is completely on her own. Longlegs also focuses very heavily on the occult and the supernatural with Longlegs being a devil worshipper who kills his victims by supernatural means. Lee Harker is also somewhat psychic. Another big difference between the two is that The Silence Of The Lambs has lots of themes regarding misogyny with Clarice being a female working in law enforcement which is typically a very male dominated profession and it constantly feels like Clarice is being looked down on by her male peers whereas Longlegs doesn’t really touch on these themes at all.

3. TRANSPHOBIA

While The Silence Of The Lambs and Longlegs both have many similarities, they also share one unfortunate similarity and that is that both of these films received some backlash for including transphobia however I only think that’s true for one of these films.

The Silence Of The Lambs is a great film and it’s a film I love however it is undeniable that it does utilize transphobic tropes with its villain albeit accidentally. It is stated in the film that Buffalo Bill is NOT actually transgender or transsexual as it’s said in the film and that trans people aren’t inherently violent. The filmmakers and the actor who played Buffalo Bill also went on to say that the character isn’t gay and that the character is a homophobic heterosexual with his performance being meant to mock gay men and that they regretted not making that obvious enough in the film(4)(4.1). Despite all this though, they did still use transphobic archetypes and making the main villain of the film be a mentally ill crossdresser was definitely harmful especially back in the 90s when people weren’t exactly super familiar with gay and trans people. I can somewhat forgive this though since it wasn’t intentional and Buffalo Bill is now no longer the only representation of the trans community as we now have a wide variety of LGBTQ+ representation in media that is much more accurate and respectful.

Longlegs was also accused of utilizing transphobic tropes with its main villain which actually genuinely shocked me since I didn’t really see it however after researching the backlash, I don’t agree with it but I think I can sort of understand where it comes from. Longlegs’ appearance has been criticized by some as a harmful caricature of trans women with his long hair and generally weird looking face(5). The character was also originally meant to be androgynous as well. However I think these points really fall apart as Longlegs is established to be male in the film with his long hair and weird looking face being due to his past as a glam rocker and his several botched surgeries(6). On top of this, Osgood Perkins would address these criticisms in a Reddit AMA saying “Anyone who is anti-trans is a fucking piece of shit idiot and it would be great to not be confused with a fucking piece of shit idiot.”(7)

4. CONCLUSION

While The Silence Of The Lambs and Longlegs are both very similar, they are also very different from one another. As for which film is better, I think they’re both amazing films that stand on their own and that it’s somewhat useless to compare them since most of these similarities start and end with superficial and coincidental traits.