Longlegs Director Explains Movie's Personal Connection to His Dad, Psycho Horror Icon Anthony Perkins (Exclusive)

A Satanic serial killer movie may not feel like a personal project, but that’s what Longlegs is for Osgood “Oz” Perkins.

“Everything that I try to do, I try to make it about myself from the beginning,” Osgood, 50, tells PEOPLE ahead of the highly anticipated release of Longlegs (in theaters now). “What's the simple truth that I can use as a kind of a North Star?”

As the son of Anthony Perkins, the writer-director has plenty of psychologically dramatic inspiration to fuel his films. “In my case, I grew up in a household with a very famous, visible father who was living two lives, at least, and was a closeted homosexual or bisexual man.”

Anthony, who died at age 60 in 1992 from AIDS-related causes, became a cinema icon when he starred as the murderous Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 hit Psycho. In his son’s words, Anthony was, before becoming known for horror, “kind of a matinee idol — Robert Pattinson, is that the [modern-day] analogy?”

Growing up as a teenager and studying film and English at Los Angeles' Harvard-Westlake School and New York University, Osgood recalls his father “was making bad horror movies. He was relegated to having to do s--- for money. So there's a weird sort of love-hate, push-pull, respect-degrading quality to the horror genre, which... I think it's lent itself to me making some off-balance, off-center things.”

Osgood’s grappling with a legacy of horror filmmaking has led to 2015’s The Blackcoat's Daughter, 2016’s I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House and, now, Longlegs, which stars Maika Monroe as an FBI agent hunting Nicolas Cage’s serial killer, who signs cryptic notes at his crime scenes “Longlegs.”

But the chills and thrills in the Silence of the Lambs-inspired Longlegs stem less from Osgood following in his father’s career footsteps (Osgood also appeared as a young Norman Bates in 1983’s Psycho II, and watched Anthony direct on the set of 1986’s Psycho III) than facing his own complicated upbringing. Anthony reportedly had homosexual relationships in addition to his longtime heterosexual romance with Osgood’s mother Berry Berenson, who he says shielded Osgood and his brother Elvis, 48, from that fact. 

“My father was an actor who had sort of a private life that was not acceptable in the mainstream, whether you want to call him a gay man or a bisexual man, whatever moniker we want to put on that,” says Osgood. “You couldn't do that, you couldn't be both. You still can't!”

Berenson (who died at age 53 in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001) was “the author” of keeping Anthony’s sexuality off-limits, recalls Osgood. “Everybody knew it, even my brother and I theoretically knew it, but we were never given any language for it,” he says. “The idea that she could make up — not make up, it's not a lie — but it's like a cover, a storytime,” inspired Longlegs, which stars Alicia Witt as the mother of Monroe’s character. 

Mild spoiler alert: Witt’s character, who repeatedly calls Monroe's character to ask if she’s saying her prayers, develops a shocking connection to the film’s titular serial killer in order to protect her daughter. “Your mother can protect you from a truth that she thinks is unsavory,” reflects Osgood. “And then you just build out a crazy movie around that.”

As the filmmaker points out, most audience members can relate to the idea of inheriting parents’ versions of the truth. “Our parents are the most responsible for what works in us and what doesn't work in us. We're carrying them around.” As a father himself, adds Osgood, it’s become obvious that “we're sort of dragging our tattered childhood behind us everywhere we go, like shadows. Some people, it only comes up at Thanksgiving. Some people are in insane asylums because of it.”

Longlegs is “the most baroque horror version of, ‘What's going on in my household?’ ” he says. “Every kid probably feels to some greater or lesser extent. But if your father's a public movie star and you don't know who he is, that's a little bit more profound.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Does Osgood resent his mother at all for crafting a narrative? “Not even a little bit,” he responds. “No one does it right. And my mom was really great… It's what it is, and it's what you were given, and you try to make something out of it.”

Longlegs is in theaters now.