Before I begin with my origin story, let me tell you who I am. My name is Brandon Henry. I was born and raised in the city of Tijuana, the famous city most films trash in their scripts— we don’t have donkey shows and we’re not the capital for drugs. I’m usually sarcastic and have a dark sense of humor, but for the sake of making my Horrific Origin story tolerable, I’ll purge my heart out to turn my messy childhood into a Halloween story.

I have a soft spot for cinema because my mom is a classic film collector, but she dislikes horror. Sadly, for her, I discovered my love for horror at an early age and, to be honest, my parents weren’t thrilled about it. To this day, they still don’t understand it but they accept it because they don’t have a choice— more about that, later.

During my childhood there wasn’t much to do on Halloween night. The usual schedule was to get home, dress up, go out with my parents at five o’clock because there was still a little daylight, come back home with a full bag or two (if the neighbors didn’t realize I went up to three times trick-or-treating with different masks) and count candy. If it wasn’t time to sleep yet, because I had school the next day, I was allowed to watch It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on VHS. They left the room and, to be honest, I got bored of watching Linus wait for something that would never appear— ironically, I still watch that Peanuts special every year to remember better times.

One year, it was 1995, I grabbed the remote and browsed the limited free channels, I stopped on a movie with a girl running through a street asking for help. I remember I was watching quietly so my parents wouldn’t notice I skipped on Snoopy crying over a piano but I couldn’t keep myself from screaming when the strange music kicked in announcing the appearance of a tall man wearing an expressionless white mask while holding a butcher knife on one hand— it was Michael Myers. My parents came back worried about what just happened and they realized Halloween was on the screen.

My mom was the only one worried about this incident because she watched the film way back when she was a young adult, while my dad didn’t have a clue because he never watched movies until he met her. My mom explained what it was and warned me I should never watch things like that nor The Simpsons— it had nothing to do with the movie but she found a chance to throw something else she didn’t like in the mix. I was listening but my mind wandered as soon as she mentioned the title of the film— how can something so fun like Halloween be related to something, according to my parents, so evil.

They were worried for a while because they didn’t know what effect would that “trauma” have on me but, fortunately, I didn’t even have nightmares about it. In fact, I was a little bit curious about what else was out there. I couldn’t find much because times weren’t simpler where now you can find all about a subject, right or wrong facts, in seconds. By next year, everything changed.

Halloween, 1996. My parents couldn’t take me trick-or-treating because my little brother got sick. Instead, they asked my 15-year-old cousin and her best friend, Dariana, to walk me around the street. They took me out for candy and got back before seven o’clock because they were tired, bored and over it. We went back to Dariana’s house, we counted the candy, ate half of it and I asked if we could watch Charlie Brown make the same mistakes over and over again. Dariana ignored my request and instead said she rented a couple of scary films for the night: they were the first two films in the Halloween saga.

I got to watch it from beginning to end and I was fascinated by how a little kid snapped one day and several years later went back to finish what he started. What was his motive? I was curious to know why. Then came the sequel, the same night, and my questions were answered while that somehow danceable score played in my mind.

The next day, my parents picked me up from my aunt’s house and I asked something that unsettled them: how come we never watch movies where people die? My dad wasn’t driving anymore, we were parked at our home but I’m sure he would’ve braked in the middle of the street without hesitation. They didn’t bother to ask why I said what I said. They immediately knew I watched horror the night before and they went straight to the phone to yell at my cousin. My parents didn’t talk nor they lectured me about what I saw. Instead, they decided to keep quiet and ignored the fact I watched, in all its glory, a horror film.

That year became a hard pill to swallow because many tragedies happened in the family: my brother and grandfather passed away a week apart in late November. Christmas was blue, and the first half of the next year was gray. During that time, I was very curious about death and what I watched months before. How did I cope? Renting horror films in secret with my best friend. He had a 17-year-old sibling who took us to Blockbuster almost every Friday night to rent whatever we wanted and even endorsed our new hobby with his own horror collection. It felt like I was finally being understood. His brother even explained to us some of the existing subgenres at the time and was very helpful to make me understand how I was lucky to watch Halloween as my first horror film.

You see, and you may already know, Halloween was a game changer for the slasher genre at time of release. Studios were uncertain on how to produce horror when it was being constantly attacked as vicious excuses to degenerate audiences and invite them into something macabre. Most of the cast was in it for the respect they had for John Carpenter’s films— as if they believed in his project and wanted to be part of his work without having an idea of how big it would turn out to be. The film almost acting as an independent low-budget piece of work— rushed to deliver a product by Fall of that same year— it was disguised as mainstream to attract the audience with a celebration everyone loved. It opened doors for other directors struggling to make indie horror, now to be able to portray their visions into mainstream media.

What I took from that explanation that was mostly all over the place because he was very excited to tell me all the facts he knew about it, was that I watched something that turned out to be a dark horse. And at that time, I felt like a misfit with my parents that didn’t support my likes, my friends who saw me as a creep, and my teachers who thought I was sick-minded whenever it was show-and-tell day and I always brought something they considered out-of-place— it was mostly my favorite Halloween decorations and my McDonald’s Happy Meal Halloween buckets.

Before the school year ended, my parents were called to the principal’s office because of my new obsession with horror. In all fairness, I was a catholic school kid so you could say I didn’t pick my battles right. My mom snapped and forced me shut down my curiosity for horror. I was not allowed to see, hear, or read horror. I also couldn’t hang out with my best friend anymore because they found out about out Friday Horror sleepovers. I was a very introverted kid, and that didn’t help calm my thoughts or break my shell so that others could understand me— I always felt like the weirdo with strange obsessions and absurd ideas. Later I found out that part of it would end up as my personality that would make me stand out but that’s a story for another time.

I adhered to what my parents wanted for me and went cold-turkey until they realized I entirely shut down— I only went to school, did my homework, watched cartoons and went to sleep. Once they realized I was on a path to become a miserable little kid, they gave a chance to understand what was happening and why did I pick horror as a pastime. I expressed to them it was my coping mechanism to feel different from anyone else because I didn’t think I stood out from a crowd. In some way, they took it personal because they thought I was being neglected by them after the hard times our family went through, but at the same time they kind of felt worried by my thoughts. I remember my dad told me that I was always going to better at something, and maybe socializing or public speaking wasn’t going to be forte— he’s the one that pushed me to write; and here I am doing so.

That same year, after being honest to each other, just being 7 years old, they gave a chance to my weirdness and took me to watch my first horror movie in a theater. That movie was Scream. Since that day, everything felt a little bit better. I felt loved by who I am, by the most important people I have in my life. Every now and then they read my reviews and feel like they want to poke their eyes out because they’re still trying to understand but are at peace with how far I’ve come in life. And, even with Scream as one of my all-time favorite films, I owe everything to a babysitter killer that turned out to be Laurie’s brother (which then became an irrelevant plot thread in the story only to later bring it back and suddenly drop it again, because Halloween is a versatile saga, just like the stages of life).

Throughout my life I have been invaded by strangers’ eyes misunderstanding the way I talk and mocking me with awkward questions whenever I express my love for horror movies and the Halloween season. Not everyone will get why a person who appears normal on the outside has a taste for sadism and gore— and those were the words my junior high school psychologist used when they spoke to my parents. Was that person being judgmental? Of course, they were. But, in a community filled with social norms that expect you to fit in— shouldn’t we support differences and let others live their own lives as long as their freedom doesn’t affect others? Of course, while obeying the law and keeping ethics and morals on a pedestal.

The moral of my Horrific Origin is do whatever the heck you want as long as you’re happy hallwith it. If you want to let your freak flag fly, let it fly high. No one should shame you nor put you in a box just because you make them uncomfortable. In a world where weird is a category for misfits and pop culture is for trend followers, I honestly prefer to be called a misfit disguised as a trendy-basic-pumpkin-loving-horror-obsessed-Halloween-freak because that’s what I like and no one can change it.

Next time on Horrific Origin, the Halloween time of year continues with Linnea covering what makes haunts so worthwhile. For now, I’ll just have to count down the days until Halloween Kills is finally released here on Friday. So close…