Osgood Perkins' 2024 horror thriller Longlegs is like watching three or four episodes of The X-Files at once. The film's protagonist, FBI agent Lee Harker (Mother Monroe), has obscure psychic powers that he uses to catch a mysterious serial killer. The killer, nicknamed Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), has a very strange MO Often, a local family will be violently murdered by one of its members, and the killer will then take his own life. A note is then found at the crime scene, written in Longleg's handwriting, taking credit for the murder. Longlegs appears to target families with nine-year-old girls born on or around the 14th of the month.

As the film progresses, other eerie clues emerge. Harker finds a life-sized child's doll in the attic, and inside it hides a mysterious metal ball. What's going on? Later, viewers will learn that Harker has a strange personal relationship with Longless. The doll would also end up playing a specific, satanic function in the Longlegs murders, as it was somehow used to channel dark mental energies into the homes of the victims. It's never very clearly explained, but it's all spiritual and terrifying. Many critics loved Longlegs for its free-floating creepiness and Perkins' nightmarish sense of style. I don't mind that the story doesn't make much sense.

The life-sized dolls appear to be inspired by a well-known murder case from the 1990s. In an interview with InversePerkins admitted to investigating the infamous murder of Jon Bennett Ramsey, the six-year-old contestant who was found dead in her home on December 26, 1996. The details of the case were the strangest to him: Ramsey was murdered in her basement, just 15 meters from a life-size doll.

At the time, many people assumed that Jon Bennet Ramsey had been murdered by her family, and there was evidence of some pretty gruesome violence and sexual assault. As the investigation continued over the next few years, DNA evidence exonerated all family members. All reports indicated that the Ramseys had engaged in notorious, possibly unethical, "parent of choice" behavior that raised public suspicion. Meanwhile, the doll was considered by many to be a strange and creepy detail. One of the Christmas presents Ramsey's parents wanted to give her that year was a life-size replica of her, dressed in a significant performance outfit that Ramsey actually wore.

Perkins latched onto that detail and kept it in his mind. When he was writing The Longs, he remembered that detail rather sharply. Perkins decided to fold it into his serial killer story in an unspeakably magical way. Perkins didn't recreate any of the other details of Ramsay's murder, but that doll just wouldn't leave his imagination. He said:

"With voodoo dolls, if you want to give someone power, you make a doll out of them and poke them. (...) Dolls, figures, sculptures, statues, puppets - it was all in the magic of the world I wanted to create The murder (Ramsey) happened nearing Christmas, and one gift the parents got for JonBenét was a life-size replica . The doll itself, dressed in one of her performance dresses, was in a cardboard box in the basement, 15 feet from where she was killed, and there was something so crazy about it that I cataloged it.

To this day, Ramsey's murder remains officially unsolved, although theories abound. Had he lived, Ramsey would have turned 35 this year. her death, as we see from "Longlegs", still lingers in the American consciousness.