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.

Zombie Taxonomy: A Guide to the Undead

Madge Bellamy, the first zombie of cinema (United Artists, 1932)

There was a time when there was just one type of zombie: the kind raised from the dead by a voodoo doctor. Though it’s easy to forget these days, witchcraft is indeed the origin of the zombies we know and love today—virus-infected, fast-running things that they are.

Recognizing your zombie can all get a bit confusing, seeing as how the species has really fleshed out in the last few decades. Below is a guide to classifying your zombie—highly important for choosing your weapon and plan of escape.

Origins

Raised from the Dead: Zombies seemed to have to evolved away from this, but they still pop up from time to time. Look for suspicious-looking altars, emptied cemeteries, and religious apocalypses. See: White Zombie (1932), George A. Romero’s Dead series, Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993).

Infection: Whether created in a lab or carried by a monkey, viruses that make people want to eat other people are rampant. Evidence includes strange children randomly appearing in your bedroom and waking in an abandoned hospital. See: 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Walking Dead (2010–).

Speed

The speed a zombie has is usually directly related to its origins. Raised from the dead? You’ve likely got a slow one on your hands. See: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (1982), Shaun of the Dead (2004). Overtaken by a rage-inducing virus? This zombie is probably super fast. See Resident Evil (2002), [Rec] (2007), World War Z (2013).

Remember, there are exceptions to this rule. See: The Evil Dead (1981), where witchcraft still makes for some pretty agile zombies.

Brains

Semi-aware: This is the most important zombie factor to identify quickly, because if there’s a bit of the person still left in there, you might be able to convince them not to bite you—at least momentarily. See: Day of the Dead (1985), Hocus Pocus (1993), Life After Beth (2014).

Blank slate: Unfortunately, most zombies don’t remember anything of who they were—including the very first voodoo zombies and the more modern virusy ones. Alas, it’d be best to place your bets on this type and just start severing brain stems. See: 98% of zombie films.

What kind of zombies lurk around Krakit’s Vancouverescape room? You’ll have to come and find out for yourself.

The Uncrackable Ciphers of the Zodiac Killer

At Krakit Escape Game we put you through the paces to solve your way out of a dodgy (but pretend) situation. But the type of thinking needed to crack our escape rooms sometimes has real-world applications …

In the late 1960s, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a serial killer known only as the Zodiac Killer murdered five people and seriously injured two. A further five killings are linked to the Zodiac, with the murderer himself claiming to have slain 37 people in total.

To this day, the murders have never been solved and the identity of the Zodiac Killer is still unknown.

However—being one of those truly annoying serial killers who taunts the authorities—the Zodiac claims to have revealed his true identity in a series of coded messages sent to San Francisco newspapers throughout the early ’70s. According to him (assuming it is a him!), the truth is out there.

It’s been more than 40 years since the Zodiac sent his last letter (in 1974), and still the ciphers of the Zodiac have yet to be solved. However, that doesn’t mean people haven’t been trying.

The Zodiac demanded that three major newspapers publish his three cryptograms, like the one below, on the front page of their August 1, 1969 editions, or else other murders would take place.

The police—along with FBI and navy cryptographers—were unable to solve the ciphers, leading the Zodiac to mock them (and, as it turns out, kill more people). However, local couple Donald and Bettye Harden managed to crack the code, starting with the basis that the Zodiac had a massive ego and therefore the message would begin with an “I.” It did, with the first line reading: “I like killing people because it is so much fun.”

Most of the ciphers remain unsolved, though—with the Zodiac’s identity contained somewhere in there.

One of the more recent attempts to crack the code comes from Ryan Garlick, a computer science professor at the University of North Texas, who led an entire class devoted to solving the cryptograms using an online tool. But, no luck so far.

Need a new obsession? See if you’ll be the one to finally crack the code.

Bring Out the Big Brains: Code-Breakers and Logicians

Alan Turing, owner of a big, big brain

As far as code-breakers go, there is none more famous these days than Alan Turing. The man who finally broke the unbreakable WWII code, Enigma, in secrecy at Bletchley Park waited a long time for his due props. The code-breaking operation wasn’t declassified until the 1970s—two decades after Turing’s tragic death.

Turing’s powers of logic and brilliant mathematical mind now rightfully sits in history as one of the most impressive the world has ever seen. But he isn’t the only logician to have wowed the rest of us with their humongous brain. Below are three others who sit in good—although incredibly rare—company with Turing.

Akṣapāda Gautama

Gautama, who lived in the 2nd century CE, was such a fan of logic that he just, y’know, founded logical philosophy in Indian. He wrote the Nyāya Sūtras, the founding text of this branch of philosophy, which sets out the steps to achieving “valid knowledge” through logical tests.

In a nutshell, Gautama created a path to spiritual enlightenment through cleverness. Not bad for a life’s work.

George Dantzig

This may sound like a familiar story: Dantzig, running late for class one day, enters the lecture theatre and sees two problems on the board. He copies them down for homework, and—after turning them in late—learns he just solved two “unsolvable” problems in statistics.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck later nabbed Dantzig’s story for Good Will Hunting. But in reality Dantzig was indeed a student (a PhD at that), not a janitor.

Lewis Carroll

Yep—that Lewis Carroll: the one who wrote Alice in Wonderland. While there are many theories about the children’s book being a metaphor for a psychotropic drug trip, it isn’t a stretch to say that maybe Carroll just had one weird brain.

Though remembered as an author, Carroll was also a mathematics professor at Oxford whose pastimes included devising logic puzzles and riddles. He included one in Alice, which became one of the most famous unanswerable riddles of all time: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Don’t worry though—While solving Krakit’s four escape rooms definitely takes some brainpower, you won’t need a Turing machine to crack them.

Five Things to Do in Vancouver before the Fall Semester Starts

Though summer’s not officially over until September 23, Vancouver’s postsecondary students are saying adieu to the season in just one week’s time.

The best way to make the most of what’s left of summer is to do. Recent science confirms that experience, not material goods, is what makes us happy. So get out there and have experiences that stick in your brain—and that you can pine for once the winter rains hit. 

Whyteliff Park. Photo: Ruth Hartnup CC BY 2.0

1. Go to the drive-in. The chance to attend an outdoor movie is coming to an end. Grab a carload of friends and hit the last River District Drive-In Movie Night. Which just happens to be a massive tribute to summer and friendship and the coming school year: Stand By Me on Sun Sept 6 at 8.30 pm.

2. Get into the great outdoors. Your butt is soon to be glued to a lecture hall seat, and visiting the “great outdoors” will mean the walk between classes. Do yourself a favour and finally conquer the Grouse Grind. Or, if you dislike sweating, jump across the rocks at Whytecliff Park instead.

3. Be a hero for a night. Bind your friendships, or even make some new ones, at one of Krakit’s four Vancouver escape rooms. The problem solving needed to save your pals from a horde of hungry zombies is also the perfect jolt to get your brain back in working order after a summer off.

4. Watch Willy be free. For a web of reasons, the whale pods around Vancouver have been extra active this year—but they won’t be around for much longer. If you’ve got some spare cash, grab a whale watching tour to get up close and personal. If not, the ferry to Vancouver Island has also given people quite a view.

5. Soak up the city. Vancouver really shines in summer, but its music and arts scene hums all year round. Get out to the annual Victory Square Block Party (Sun Sept 6 from 1.30–9.30 pm) to catch a huge line-up of local bands and get into the spirit of community that makes Vancouver more than just some pretty mountains and beaches.