Last-Minute Group Costumes for Halloween

So you’ve booked one of our horror-themed escape games for Halloween, and you’ve just realized it provides the most excellent opportunity to do a group costume. Unfortunately, you no longer have time to papier-mâché, sew, and blacksmith Game of Thrones costumes.

Never fear! We’ve got you covered with some ideas for easy group costumes that you can throw together with very little preparation.

Photo: Eva Rinaldi (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Ghostbusters

With the new Kristen Wiig reboot coming out soon, this costume is both classic and timely. You’ll need grey or beige coveralls, black backpacks, and some reflective tape for the new cast’s striped outfits or some paper for the old ones’ arm badge.

Cast of Orange Is the New Black

Coveralls win again here. Either orange or beige will do you. Each style your hair like your favourite character—or don’t and just claim you’re an extra.

Photo: Kelly (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Minions

Got a large group? Great, you can all be minions! Blue denim overalls, a yellow shirt, and a yellow toque get you most of the way there. Then, for the eyes, put glasses on your head or get inventive with craft paper.

Cast of Arrested Development / Seinfeld / Friends / Cheers 

aka People Dressed Normally

The trick to these group costumes is that the strength is in the numbers. You don’t make a whole lot of sense on your own, so united you must stand. The most effort is figuring out whose personal wardrobe best matches each character.

Photo: Jeff Christiansen (cc-by-sa-2.0)

Peter Pan and the Lost Boys

One person needs to wear a pointed paper hat and all green clothes (yes, tights required), and the rest can just look scraggly and dirty, if you’re going for the Hook look. This is also an opportunity to have a Play-Doh food fight like you’ve always wanted. Or, if you want to go Disney, the Lost Boys should wear animal onesies.

Photo: Arbitraily0 (cc-by-sa-3.0)

Ghostface and Victims

One person needs to commit to wearing the ghost mask and black cloak of the classic Scream killers, but everyone else gets away with wearing regular clothes—plus a large amount of fake blood. Extra ideal if you still have all of your ’90s clothes and a clunky cordless phone to carry around.

If you haven’t yet booked your Halloween spot at Krakit’s Vancouver escape room, you can nab a slot here.

The Three Most Ingenious Traps from the Saw Franchise

There’s a new room at our Vancouver escape game, which takes all the panic and urgency of the Saw films and gives you 45 minutes to escape a life-or-death trap. Think you could think straight under such intense conditions and make it out alive?

In celebration of Krakit’s new Saw Room, we’ve crowned some of the series’ best traps below. (Spoilers ahead!)

Best motivation for teamwork: The Sewer in Saw V

The five people trapped in a sewer in Saw V must pass not one, but four, tests. Each of the tests requires teamwork to escape alive—but unfortunately this group isn’t the best at putting their heads together (har har har). They have to dodge group decapitation, search through glass-filled jars for keys, drain their own blood, and climb into a coffin. No big deal, right? They all could’ve survived if they just worked together but, uh, they don’t.

Most likely to happen in the real world: The Bathroom Trap in Saw I

The scenario that originally captivated audiences is still one of Saw’s most powerful: Adam Stanheight and Dr. Lawrence Gordon are faced with cutting off a foot to escape death. This trap is extra simple compared to the traps later on, yet it’s still one of the most shudder-worthy—because it’s something we can viscerally imagine doing ourselves. Being forced to cut off one of your limbs to survive could actually happen—as Aron Lee Ralston, the inspiration behind the film 127 Hours, knows very well.

Worst game of “Would You Rather”: The Angel Trap aka The Rib Spreader from Saw III

Allison Kerry, a detective who has had the bad luck to have been working on the Jigsaw case, awakes in in a metal contraption hanging from the ceiling. There’s a jar of acid next to her, with a key inside. Billy the Puppet tells her she either has to unlock the contraption by reaching into the jar of acid, with her bare hand, before the key dissolves, or the metal straightjacket will pull off all her ribs. Unlucky for her, this game of “Would You Rather” makes her sample both options.

The 10 Creepiest Captivity Spaces in Film

The struggle to break free is what makes the countdown clock at Krakit tick so loudly—even though there’s no real danger, there’s still a lot at stake. There’s just something about being locked up, no matter the situation, that brings out our primal urge to get the heck out.

We previously covered the best cinematic captors to scare the dickens out of us, counting down “The 10 Best Alien, Beastly, and Supernatural Captors” and “The 10 Best All-Too-Human Captors” to ever terrorize the big screen.

Now we dive into the situations and places where the only option left is to escape—or perish.

10. The dome in the Hunger Games series

Twenty-four randomly chosen kids are forced into a dome of death constructed by sadistic adults for entertainment purposes, where the only escape is by murder. Not fun. 

9. The house in House

This late-’70s Japanese gem sees a pack of teenage girls trapped in a bloodthirsty house that boasts possessed appliances and other supernatural traps.

8. The maze in Cube

A grid of interconnected cubes leaves its prisoners wondering which is just a regular old cube and which is an instant death trap.

7. The pit in The Silence of the Lambs

You’re kept at the bottom of a mouldy well and the only thing to think about all day is when the crazed lunatic who put you there is going to use your skin for his next outfit.

6. The town in Groundhog Day

This may not be a scary movie, but Bill Murray does resort to suicide (multiple times) just to get out of Punxatawney. Here, charmingly, the only escape turns out to be love.

5. The serial killer’s brain in The Cell 

Not only does the serial killer in The Cell keep his victims in a Plexiglas case that automatically fills with water, but poor Jennifer Lopez spends the film desperately trying to escape his bizarro mind.

4. The panic room in Panic Room 

Nothing bonds a mother and daughter (who’s asthmatic, naturally) like being trapped in a concrete- and steel-encased panic room while a team of thieves do their best to kill them from the outside.

3. The Overlook Hotel in The Shining 

Tired of hanging out in a haunted and shifting hotel in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter? Where you going to escape to, Danny? Oh, a snowy hedge maze? Good luck with that.

2. The coffin in Buried

As horrible as it would be to be trapped in a creepy sprawling hotel, waking up in a tiny coffin, deep underground, with only a lighter and a cell phone to save you, would be substantially worse.

1. The multiple traps of the Saw series

Nothing compares, however, to the many, many traps laid by the vindictive and philosophizing serial killer known as Jigsaw. Sorry, pal—there’s probably a really good chance you’re not getting out of that head-slicing machine.

Be sure to get a taste of Jigsaw’s house of horrors at Krakit’s new Vancouver escape room inspired by the Saw series.