How I lost — and found — my love for Halloween movies

Cut to the Feeling is a monthly column by Anne T. Donahue about the art and pop culture that sparks joy, grief, nostalgia, and everything in between.

Last Halloween, I sat on my couch, waiting for my grandpa to die.

After a stroke a week or so before, he started going downhill faster and faster, and by the end of October we were told it was only a matter of days. So after dropping my mom off at his long-term care facility, I went back home, turned off the lights, and ate a bunch of the Halloween candy I'd opted not to give out anymore. I was sad, angry, and miserable. And I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do less than take part in the spirit of the season.

So you can imagine my literal horror when I turned on the TV and was met with an onslaught of back-to-back scary movie programming. Where I'd spent Halloweens before soaking up the blood, sweat, and tears of characters in Halloween, Scream, and The Shining, this time I wanted nothing to do with stories that examined death, its many avenues, and the grim realities that tend to accompany the end of a person — even if they were told in ways that were camp, funny, or eons away from my own reality.

My year had already been dictated by death: as the pandemic dwindled into what is now our new normal, my dad died exactly one month before my grandpa had his first stroke while my mom and I were visiting him. I'd become a ball of grief, sorrow, and bitterness; the things that used to bring me joy now felt like a cruel reminder that life would never be the same. How could I possibly enjoy watching Jack Torrance descend into madness through the halls of the Overlook Hotel? How could I go back to the world of Norman Bates or The Birds' Melanie Daniels? 

I spent over an hour that night flipping through TV stations, jealous that Sidney Prescott could so brilliantly cheat death in every Scream movie while still managing to avoid falling into the post-parental death grief trap that I did. (By that October, it was a miracle if I even put on mascara — I could never achieve Neve's tousled locks or dewy complexion.) I hated that Michael Meyers interacted with his victims so comically before he attacked them, somehow making their grisly deaths seem entertaining. How dare everybody, everywhere, interpret loss as anything other than a tragedy? Didn't everyone understand death was serious? That it really was coming for us all?

Obviously, I wasn't always a walking version of Joyce Carol Oates' joyless ode to decorative skeletons. I'd loved Halloween my whole life — not just for the cuteness of trick-or-treaters (though none can compare to the year I went as Al Borland from Home Improvement), but for the entertainment that drew our attention to the fact that all things end. It was safe to play chicken with mortality when mortality itself seemed controllable or at a distance. Now, the threat of more loss felt like it was standing right behind me, like a call coming from inside the house.

Death is our biggest mystery; it's often one of our biggest fears. We tend not to have a clue about what our last chapter looks like, so we let film directors explore countless worst-case scenarios and relieve the tension by cheering for — or against — main characters as a means of control. Watching horror stories played out on screen can help us fool ourselves that, regardless of threat (whether knife-wielding psychopath, organized bird army, or even terrible dialogue), we're the exception; we would survive.

My grandpa died four days later, a few hours after we'd all left and promised to be back again tomorrow. We'd spent the day hanging out in his room, watching him as he talked to people we couldn't see and experienced things we couldn't understand. He stopped breathing a handful of minutes after his nurse changed his pajamas and gave him a sponge bath. His evolution into a very old, sick person had been a horror movie unto itself, made worse by a healthcare system that was short-staffed and unable to provide the care he needed. He didn't die at the hands of a movie villain — he died the way many of us do, as the result of his body simply giving out.

At the time, I felt so defined by loss that this detail didn't matter to me: death was death was death was death, and I'd lost two of the most important people I'd ever known exactly four months apart to the day. I was watching everything through the lens of extreme grief. Even rom-coms had been offending me. (How dare anybody, even inside the Ephron-verse, end up happy?)

But the thing about death is that our relationship with it isn't static. It's a constant that finds its way into almost every day and experience, reminding us that at some point we'll be faced with an ending — details TBD. At some point this summer, a year after losing my dad and months after losing my grandpa, I began treating death differently. I was aware of its presence — what it had done to me and to my family — but it no longer felt like an enemy or an attack against us. It was just there.

So why not confront my fears by staring death in its face, in all of its various horrifying, extreme, fictionalized ways? Why not separate real life from fiction and see horror movies as a valuable means of escaping the mundanity of being so hopelessly sad? (Grief, dear friends, is truly boring.) Why not spend two hours congratulating myself on not having ever had Gale Weathers' Scream 3 bangs, perhaps the most horrifying character of all? Horror films are a brilliant avenue through which to explore the final curtain call. Especially since they're just stories.

I've yet to sit down and watch a Halloween and/or horror movie this year — but not because I'm angry at them. This year, I've already done the impossible: I somehow kept my life moving. I went back to school. I began writing about the events I didn't think I'd be ready to face.

And my mom and I decorated the house for Halloween.

We have happy ghosts hanging from our front window, and more pumpkins on the front step than anybody should. This year, provided all remains boring, I'll set up shop on the driveway and hand out candy to the kids whose costumes I will love, even if I don't know what they're supposed to be. Then, I'll open my laptop and treat myself to the antics of any number of horror villains who introduced me to some of my biggest fears, and mentally plan and plot how I'd escape them, as if I have any real control over anything.

This year, I'll accept that death comes for us all — but for a couple of hours, I can face it in a way that feels a little less scary, especially alongside a bowl of Twizzlers, Glosettes, and Mr. Big bars that I bought just for me.