ROCK FALLS – For most people, horror movies like “Halloween” and “The Exorcist” send chills up the spine and make it difficult to sleep at night.

Such thrillers do keep Rock Falls native Nathan Waters up at night, although for a very different reason: For him, such films are the stuff of creative inspiration.

Waters, 21, now of Chicago, began making films at age 13. The movie that inspired his love for horror is John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” which he said revealed to him “the power that a horror movie can have.”