WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Longlegs.

Longlegs director Oz Perkins is opening up about the movie’s ominous title. Starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage, the movie follows Monroe’s FBI agent Lee Harker as she investigates a series of mysterious murder-suicides. Harker quickly begins to uncover a Satanic plot that has been plaguing her family since she was a little girl. The movie was released on July 12 and has already doubled its under-$10 million budget. Longlegs‘ excellent reviews have likely propelled its box office success.

While Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs plays a massive role in the movie, the character’s bizarre name is never explained. In an interview with Collider, Perkins opened up about the meaning, or the general lack thereof. Despite seemingly having an important origin in the story, the name is little more than a word that “sounds good” to Perkins. Check out his full explanation below:

I don’t know if it has meaning or not. It doesn’t have meaning. I like words, and it’s a good word. It sounds good. It sounds sort of scary but also sort of fun. It sounds pure. It sounds like ’70s to me. It sounds like something that maybe Robert Plant would have sung in a Zeppelin song. It has an old pin-up quality to it. It invokes a certain time, I suppose, and there’s an awkwardness to it that he has, that the character has sort of an uneasy clumsiness to him. I don’t know; it just feels good.

Longlegs’ Title Is Completely Meaningless

Nicolas Cage’s Monster Never Needed More Than A Scary Title

There is one major concept associated with the name Longlegs: Bugs. There are a series of insects and arachnids known as longlegs, including the infamous Daddy Longlegs spider. Having a villain named after a spider is a clever concept, considering that the arachnid is known for terrifying onlookers. Cage’s villain has nothing to do with spiders, but the very image created by his name is enough to frighten audiences and to make his eventual appearance more anticipated. Whether he would look like a spider was an open question.

While Longlegs‘ bizarre and horrifying ending proved that Cage did not appear to be spider-like, the ominous appearance was enough to make it an interesting concept for a villain. Instead, the title was entirely unrelated to the overall themes of the story. The character simply calls himself Longlegs, partly as a means to communicate his relationship with Harker, who met him when she was a young girl. The name is intended to be nothing more than an eerie title, which was exactly what Perkins was looking for. It is a memorable name that paints a horrifying picture.

There are ways to view the title as being related to the story, of course. Longlegs traps Harker’s mother in his web, and the entire story is about the villain expanding a web of murders to fulfill an ominous and mysterious goal. While it does not fully clarify his name, the metaphor provides some explanation. Perkins wanted nothing more than a name that would strike fear in the hearts of onlookers, while also reflecting on classic horror movies. The Longlegs title perfectly reflects Perkin’s overall goals.

Source: Collider