How to Host a Halloween Movie Night for Grown-ups

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Halloween is one of the best days of the year to host a party, especially this year’s falling on a Saturday. But, with so many larger Halloween events on pause, you can still invite a few friends to celebrate safely.

Let’s talk about a few unique ideas for a chic Halloween movie night for grown-ups! With free shipping on orders over $39 using code SPOOKSQUAD20 with my friends at Oriental Trading, I’ll show you how to host, decorate, create a drink station, and set up a bone-chilling treat table.

Pick Your Palette

When looking for seasonal decor, choose a cohesive color palette, and stick with it throughout. Keep it tight by limiting to two or three dominant colors.  For our movie night, I decided to go with the less traditional Halloween palette of white, black, and gold for a more chic feel. With just a few tweaks, this look can carry you through the fall season.

Halloween Shelfie Styling

Don’t be afraid to look outside of Halloween decor for pieces that evoke spooky feelings, especially if you can use them outside the holiday.

The secret to styling shelves is about telling a story; each space is a little vignette. Don’t be afraid; your shelves, or whatever area you are decorating, don’t need to be the same theme. Your color palette with pull everything together.

For example, one shelf became a cabinet of curiosities with eyeball orbs, crystal balls, and palmistry items.

Another shelf uses a Mardi Gras long-nose mask and spray-painted wasp skeletons.

I do love a haunted cheeseboard, and this time I used my skeletal friends for a haunted cupboard.

Let guests know tonight’s double feature with a marquee board! I devoured the entire book as a kid; I read every book by Stephen King at least twice. So, of course, we are featuring both remake and sequel blockbusters. Here are a few more of my favorites, including more King classics, perfect for grown-ups:

• The Others
• Carrie
• The Sixth Sense
• Get Out
• Children of the Corn
• The Thing
• The Shining
• Sleepy Hollow
• Poltergeist
• Ju-On: The Grudge

A Halloween Bloody Mary Bar

A Bloody Mary bar for Halloween? Of course! But make it more Halloween so guests can help themselves by decanting into appropriate vessels.

I have always been obsessed with pretty barware and what better time to show off a collection of your favorite glasses and other pieces?

Don’t these mini chalkboard signs look like tombstones? They are a great way to let guests know what they are in for.

Even tomato juice and hot sauces get the special treatment served in plastic test tubes.

Check out my How to Create a Bloody Mary Bar for lots of great ideas for your libations.

Halloween Treats Not Tricks

We need to soak up all that alcohol with a great Halloween spread. I never tire of a skeleton treat board! I filled mine with some of my favorite seasonal snacks from kettle corn and caramel flavored marshmallows to black and white cookies and Halloween sandwich cookies.

Keeping our snack foods within our color palette makes it easy to make anything ‘Halloween food’, along with creepy candy fare.

Don’t forget to think outside the party box when it comes to incorporating items. A glass coffin terrarium makes a fitting resting place for gummi body parts. Skeleton hands hold handfuls of black saltwater taffy. Take regular plastic bugs to the next level spray-painting them white.

Use Low Lighting

Turn off the main lights and create a warm glow and the perfect party atmosphere using low lighting like candles and accent lights. Use a candelabra and gold decorative bowls as tealight holders. Reflective surfaces are perfect for scattering light and help create flickering shadows that fill a room with dread.

Novelty lights like my cat head and BOO light fixtures and marquee board, are additional light sources that set the mood.

Halloween isn’t canceled! Even though things look different this year, with a little planning and creativity, we can still celebrate safely with a Halloween movie night.

If you need more black + white Halloween ideas, check out my Pinterest board…