One of my favorite times of the year is fall and with the Halloween season quickly approaching, I start to think about what I want to put on my watch list this year.

I’ve been recently on a found-footage kick lately. There is something terrifying and voyeuristic about this genre that, when done well, that leaves me wide awake at night as a viewer. One of the scariest films that I’ve seen in the last twenty years is Paranormal Activity (2007). For the uninitiated, the film tells the story of a couple that’s recently made the decision to move in together. After the girlfriend admits that she’s been subjected to paranormal activity her whole life, her boyfriend makes the decision to see what he captures on film and all hell breaks loose.

The film was a phenomenon in the late 2000s and early 2010s. What started as word of mouth following, became an annual Halloween event. After the profitable (but creatively bankrupt) fourth entry, the series took a minor pause and then returned in 2014 with Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, which transplanted the series from white suburbia into a Latinx Community.

While the film was marketed as a spinoff, it is arguably a very direct sequel that expands the mythology and brings some much-needed diversity into the franchise (and horror in general). While the director has stated that the intention was to not cater to a demographic, rewatching the film made me realize just how much the cultural values and beliefs have played a vital role in the horror genre, particularly in the areas of faith and Catholicism (see: The Conjuring universe) now and then (The Exorcist, The Omen, and countless others).

The Latinx community even got their chance to see one of the most famous bogeywomen on the screen when The Curse of La Llorona opened in cinemas last year. What’s fascinating about these films, is that they tap into universal values of faith, family, and our fear of the unknown. We see audiences constantly hungering for more.

This experience has motivated me to go back and revisit some of the more influential Latinx horror films of my time that had a profound experience on me as a screenwriter and as a cinephile. I will be digging through the good, the bad, and the ugly to dissect and analyze: what is Latinx representation in horror, and what needs to change?
Until then, Happy Fall everyone and say a prayer before bedtime.