If you’ve seen anything about Longlegs, from its cryptic teasers to its spooky trailer, you probably know it’s an upcoming horror movie about a serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. You also probably don’t know much else.

The trailer has elements that certainly feel recognizable, like a young female FBI agent investigating a notorious serial killer, but there’s an overwhelming sense of unease and mystery that leaves the whole thing feeling just a little bit off, enhancing the creepiness and unfamiliarity. And according to director Oz Perkins, that’s very much by design.

Perkins describes Longlegs as a “pop-punk, nostalgic serial killer movie with a supernatural flavor,” but he didn’t want to throw all that at audiences right away.

“[I] used things like Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Zodiac as kind of primers,” Perkins says. “So the audience sees those clues, or those cues, and says, OK, I understand how this will work.”

But these cinematic touchstones are more like starting points than destinations for Perkins, a veteran horror filmmaker whose past work, like The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel, has proven popular in the world of arthouse horror but never quite broken into the mainstream.

“It’s meant to be easier on an audience to connect with it. So that when it gets funky, and it does get funky, we’ve kind of earned it,” Perkins explains. “It’s more playful at that point. I think in previous movies, I think I’ve gotten a little opaque. [...] Now I want to make something that more people will enjoy, and will give me more latitude to do what I want, so it starts with something more familiar.”

Perkins’ work on the movie started with the character of Longlegs, who had been figuratively lurking in the background and at the edges of some of his previous stories and ideas. He said he knew certain things about the character, but compared it to seeing the back of someone who looks familiar as they leave a convenience store: You’re so positive you know them, but you can never be totally sure — a terrifying description for a character that would later become a serial killer.

“I knew that he drove up to people’s houses, on their birthdays, or on their kids’ birthdays,” Perkins says. “And he brought with him sort of, maybe, stuffed animals? He was a clown or a singer or magician or performer or something.”

But turning that vague idea of a character into something to center a movie around proved to be more of a puzzle for Perkins. He says he worked it out like a crossword puzzle, understanding the shape and space he had allotted, then fitting in the details that would make the movie work and make it accessible for audiences, like turning Longlegs into a serial killer, or centering the movie on a young FBI agent to pull in a Silence of the Lambs homage — a movie he says made a huge impression on him as a kid.

Another key piece of the puzzle for Perkins was adding Nicolas Cage to the project as the serial killer in question. Perkins says Cage read the script and loved it, and that he brings an undeniably unique energy to all his characters. It was Perkins’ job to find a way to channel that energy.

“There’s no version where I’m going to try to change him into something that he’s not, or try to diffuse what he’s going to bring,” Perkins explains. “You don’t get Nicolas Cage in your picture unless you want what he’s going to bring. You kind of just wait and see what it is. And you have faith and trust that it’s going to be right. And in this case, it really is.”

As for where the story of Longlegs goes after the familiar setup, Perkins didn’t offer many details, preferring to save the surprises for when people can see the movie for themselves. However, he did offer up the tantalizing note that David Lynch is a particularly big inspiration for him.

“Fire Walk with Me was really important to me,” he says. “I feel like the tempo, the environment, the cadence of things, the world, those things are really deep in my psyche and I think they probably come in the wash a bit.”

One thing Perkins does make clear is that viewers are best off experiencing all of Longlegs’ twists and surprises in a theater if they can.

“We are hiding something under a veil,” Perkins teases. “We are hiding something under a curtain and it’s more fun to pull the sheet off when there’s a lot of people watching. It’s kind of like, Gather around so we can reveal the Elephant Man. And I think doing that in a room with people, in an immersive experience of the theater — I’m proud to have made a movie that works well that way.”

Longlegs will be in theaters on July 12.