Double, double toil and trouble

Vandal Entertainment to show “Hocus Pocus” and “A Quiet Place” Wednesday evening

For the second year in a row, the ASUI Vandal Entertainment Board will host a free double feature event in celebration of Halloween Wednesday evening.

This year, in addition to showing “Hocus Pocus” and “A Quiet Place,” Vandal Entertainment will have an escape room and costume contest.

According to the Vandal Entertainment Board website, last year’s event featured “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Annabelle Creation” — two traditionally scary Halloween movies. Vandal Entertainment members decided to take a different approach this year to appeal to a wider audience.

Vandal Entertainment’s late nights programming chair, Saraya Flaig, led the event planning for this year’s Halloween Double Feature, while the rest of the group provides assistance.

“I believe last year’s event was successful, that’s why we are expanding on it this year,” said Hagen Hunsaker, Vandal Entertainment concert chair. “Our late nights programming chair, Saraya, decided that since in the years past they’ve done two movies that were kind of the same, they would do one movie for a certain audience and then a scary movie.”

This year’s festivities will begin at 7 p.m. with a showing of “Hocus Pocus” in the International Ballroom, followed by a costume contest and a showing of “A Quiet Place.” The escape room, which should take 20 minutes for a group of 6 people, will be running throughout the event in the Vandal Ballroom.

“There is always stuff going on Halloween night, but it can be things people don’t necessarily want to go to, like parties,” Hunsacker said. “I think it’s really nice to offer something else for people to do on Halloween. This offers something to do that’s fun and it’s done early enough that people can go out if they want to.”

Hunsacker said they chose to feature an escape room in addition to the double feature to provide a “good mix” of activities for people to choose from. This makes the event more accessible to busy students who may not have the time to watch an entire movie on a weekday night.

“I’m hoping that enough students show up that the escape room is successful because then maybe we could do it on a bigger scale next year,” he said. “It’s always nice to do something new and have the students like it because then we know it works and we can do it more often.”

Hunsacker also said it is rare to find an opportunity to see “Hocus Pocus” on a big screen now, so this event could be a unique opportunity to see a classic Halloween movie be given the silver screen treatment once again.

The movies will be shown in the International Ballroom and the escape room will be located in the Vandal Ballroom. The event is free with a Vandal ID. Popcorn and candy will be provided and there will be prizes awarded for the best dressed person at the costume contest.

Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]

Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.