Are scary movies at your house not scary enough? Do you have a home theater or a designated viewing area that could use some sprucing down to create a ghastly chamber of celluloid on screen? Well, we have some tips for you that will transmogrify this matinee into the macabre! Follow us, if you dare, to see how you can petrify your patrons into never wanting to watch another movie of your choosing again.
Visuals
Is your television up to the task of scaring the wits out of your friends and family? Most TVs are good enough, but to really send dread hunting through the bloodstream of those occupying the seats around you, a television of a more monstrous order may be howling your name.
However, the top-of-the-line TVs can get expensive and if you are only doing this for Halloween, a budget-friendly projector and a white sheet can be precisely what you need to set the scene. Just make sure you don’t use the sheet with eyeholes in it from last year. You can find suitable mini-projectors at a great price from Target with a TopCashback gift card and earn 2% cash back.
Lights
Firstly, you will need to set the mood to morbid. You won’t want any outsourced light peering through so your audience will know they have been clutched within the confines of the coffin you are creating. Or something like that. Heavy curtains are the way to go for this and they do a fabulous job containing the soundwaves for a more theatrical experience.
An eternal, or undead, mood setter (depending on how you look at it), proper lighting is an immediate way for you to create an ambiance (zombie-ance) when welcoming people to your Halloween screening. One way to incorporate the lighting into the film of your choosing is with the Govee Dreamview TV Strip lights.
From your phone, you can control the lighting throughout the entire spectrum of colors or have it sync with whatever is on the screen. Of course, if you decide to go with Nosferatu, it would only switch between black and white. Grab one of these kits from Best Buy and receive up to 15% cash back after your purchase.
Decoration
This is really going to sell the theater and it's your chance to get creative. Some ideas to get you started are to turn the room into a cinema cemetery with failed movies on the headstones. You could mummify your movie theater by TP-ing your own house and saving the tricksters a trip. Or you may want to go for the haunted movie house look, which would include a skeleton dressed as a theater employee.
You can find many if not all of the decorations you are looking for at JOANN and get cash back while you’re at it.
Snacks
A bowl of popcorn with a prosthetic hand sitting in it, a tray of mummies in a blanket, or cake pops dressed as eyeballs. There's an infinite number of ideas to use and create to make the snacks or on-theme dinner for your movie night. It’s your house, only you can tell you there’s no eating in front of the TV.
Supplies to produce these foods or premade holiday snacks themselves can be purchased at gopuff for up to 20% cash back.
Movies
Depending on who you have with you for this sickening cinematic displeasure, we have a few movie recommendations for you.
If you are in the mood for a classic, you cannot go wrong with Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Night of the Living Dead. For something that gets your survival instinct thumping, we suggest The Thing or Alien. For something gruesome that you wish you hadn’t seen there is nothing worse (and by that I mean better) than The Exorcist. And for a family feature there is Monster House, the cult favorite Hocus Pocus, and of course Hotel Transylvania.
You can rent and stream all of these movies along with other Halloween favorites through the Redbox app for cash back.
by Louis Pino
Louis Pino is the junior copywriter at TopCashback.com. He defines frugality as not solely buying life's necessities, but being shrewd when it comes to purchasing your wants. This is why, since 2021, Louis has been spreading the good word of balancing money management and shopping through informative blog posts such as this.
