What Does Your Favorite Horror Movie Smell Like? It’s This Guy’s Job to Decide

When Killian Wells was a kid living in New York, he’d race home from school and press play on the VHS tape he loved most: Halloween. Michael Myers, the silent, expressionless shape of malevolence, flickered on the screen over and over, stalking, slashing, surviving. Every day for a month, Wells would submit himself to this childhood trauma.

“I probably have it memorized at this point,” he says.

Today, Wells, 36, is a master of the horror fragrance, meaning it’s his job to consider some of the most iconic, terrifying scary movies—The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, American Psycho, Nosferatu, based on F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionist film, to name a few—and imagine what they smell like.

Perfume and film have long been intertwined. In 1960, The Scent of Mystery debuted with Smell-O-Vision, piping scents into theaters to match the onscreen action. Decades later, John Waters handed out scratch-and-sniff cards for screenings of Polyester.

The influence flows both ways, and the model today is less gimmick and more legitimate marketing opportunity: In 2021, French perfume house État Libre d’Orange released a scent inspired by the cult anime The Ghost in the Shell. More recently, Heretic Parfum followed in Xyrena’s terror-scented footsteps with an interpretation of the 2024 remake of Nosferatu.

These fragrances, along with Wells’ scent brand, Xyrena, are bottling the essence of movies, giving them a sensorial new life and a new reason to celebrate beloved pieces of pop culture. Often timed to a rerelease or anniversary of the film in order to gin up DVD sales or streaming numbers, the scents have become a subject of fascination, piquing the interest of press and film fans thirsty for unique merchandise related to their favorite movies.

So how did Wells end up conjuring potions for the creations that haunted him as a child? By summoning Satan, of course. And also, well, some other things happened.

After a career as a pop songwriter, Wells founded Xyrena while living in Los Angeles in 2015. But he didn’t plan for his perfume company to smell like fear. The early perfumes were novel—collaborations with contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a posthumous deal with Aaliyah’s estate, even a cannabis collection packaged like a joke for stoners. Each bottle came with a golden cap and was sealed in a VHS-style blister pack (which Wells has trademarked as an “XHS”), like a memory you couldn’t rewind far enough to unsee.

Fast forward to 2016, when Wells began crafting fragrances for Xyrena based on fictional films. Dark Ride, a scent for a slasher set in a water park, led with chlorinated pool water but hid something feral beneath the surface. Cinemaniac, with notes of buttered popcorn and sticky floors, invoked a terrifying scene set in a movie theater.

But Wells wanted to push his abilities as a scent-maker further. Other films had released perfumes—there was a Black Widow (2021) perfume and a Deadpool (2016) eau de toilette. But those were the type of cheap, mass-produced toss-offs that end up in the discount bin at T.J. Maxx. Wells recognized a niche for elevated, creative scents that evoke the unique setting of a horror movie. In 2020, now based in Austin, he contacted the licensing agent for American Psycho with a pitch: a scent worthy of Patrick Bateman’s detached cruelty.