Warning! MAJOR spoilers ahead for Longlegs.

Longlegs director Oz Perkins explains how real-life events inspired the movie’s dolls twist. Released in theaters earlier this month after a remarkably successful marketing campaign, the hit NEON horror stars Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, an FBI agent pursuing Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs serial killer. The movie features a number of surprising narrative twists and turns, but one major reveal is related to the killer’s crafting of dolls, and how these Satanic creations are ultimately used to bring evil into victims’ homes, brainwashing fathers into murdering their families.

In a recent interview with Inverse, Perkins delves more into Longlegs‘ dolls and how he came up with the idea. According to the director, the use of dolls actually stems from the real-life murder of JonBenét Ramsey, a beauty pageant queen of only six years old. Check out Perkins’ full comment below:

“With voodoo dolls, if you want to inflict power on someone, you make a doll of them, and you poke it. If you want to bring down a regime, you make an effigy of a politician, and you burn it in the streets. Puppets, effigies, sculptures, statues, dolls — that was all in the magic of the world I wanted to create.

“The murder took place approaching Christmas, and one present that the parents had gotten for JonBenét was a life-size replica doll of herself, wearing one of her pageant dresses. It was in a cardboard box in the basement, 15 feet from where she was killed, and there was something so insane about that, I’d cataloged it away.”

Longlegs’ Dolls Explained

How The Dolls Fit Into Nicolas Cage’s Killer’s Plan

The positive Longlegs reviews are a testament to how effectively Perkins slowly unfolds the mystery at the center of his latest horror movie, and the dolls play a crucial role in the story. Over the course of the investigation, it becomes clear that Cage’s serial killer, whose real name is Dale Ferdinand Cobble, is crafting these dolls in an unknown location, putting a mysterious silver orb inside each doll’s head. The real function of the dolls isn’t revealed until towards the film’s conclusion.

The Longlegs ending reveals that Lee’s mother, Ruth (Alicia Witt) has been playing a crucial role in Cobble’s killings. She began helping Cage’s killer in order to save her daughter from a dark fate, delivering his dolls to victims’ homes and pretending that they were gifts from the church. The silver orbs inside the dolls’ heads somehow contain Longlegs’ Satanic whispers, and these whispers ultimately put a trance on the family and cause the extreme bloodshed that follows.

Crucially, the doll that was delivered to the Carter family remains intact at the end of the film, suggesting it could still affect others if its not destroyed. The ending to Lee’s story and Ruby’s is left somewhat ambiguous, as Longlegs’ influence hasn’t fully been eradicated from the world. While Longslegs dolls were already an especially creepy addition to the story, Perkins’ latest comment only makes them all the more disturbing.

Source: Inverse