Movie Drinking Games

A movie drinking game is the only drinking game where the entertainment is already sorted. Nobody has to shuffle or count or remember a hand sign; the film plays, and the rules tell you when to drink. It works for two people on a sofa and for a room of twenty, which is why it sits with the party drinking games. The rule sets below are the common ones for nine films and franchises, pulled together from the versions people actually play, with two templates at the end for any rom-com or horror film. Each set has six to eight rules. Pick five.

How movie drinking games work

Every movie drinking game is the same game with different triggers. Before the film starts, the group agrees on a short list of things that will happen during it, and every time one of them happens, everyone drinks. The universal triggers, which work for nearly any film, are these:

• Drink when a character says the title of the film
• Drink when a character does the thing they always do (the catchphrase, the habit, the signature move)
• Drink when a character says something they have already said in the film
• Drink when a song starts playing over a montage
• Drink when someone says “we have to go” or “there’s no time”
• Finish your drink on the biggest scene, agreed in advance

Then you add film-specific rules from the lists below. Keep the total at five or six, and mark one of them as the rare one that costs more. A rule that fires every ninety seconds is a sip; a rule that fires twice a film is a long drink.

Harry Potter drinking game

Any of the eight films works. The first two have the most spells and the most house points; the later ones have more Voldemort and fewer brooms. The rules below are the common set across the series.

• Drink when someone says “Harry Potter” in full
• Drink when a spell is cast out loud
• Drink when Voldemort is mentioned, including “You-Know-Who” and “He Who Must Not Be Named”
• Drink when someone flies a broom
• Drink when Gryffindor gains or loses house points
• Drink when Snape glares at Harry
• Drink twice when Hermione corrects someone
• Finish your drink when Hagrid says something he was not supposed to

The spell rule is the one to watch. In the first film it is a sip; in the later films, a duel is a dozen spells in a minute, so treat a duel as one drink.

Star Wars drinking game

The original trilogy is the safest choice. The prequels have the most lightsabers per minute; the sequels have the most “bad feeling” lines. Pick one film, not a marathon, because the rules below are tuned for a single two-hour sitting.

• Drink when a lightsaber is switched on or off
• Drink when someone says “I have a bad feeling about this”
• Drink when a stormtrooper shoots and misses
• Drink when someone says “may the Force be with you”
• Drink when Yoda speaks in backwards order
• Drink when a droid beeps and someone understands it
• Drink twice when someone reveals they are related to someone else
• Finish your drink when something is blown up from the inside

The stormtrooper rule is the dangerous one. Count a firefight as a single drink or the battle scenes will end the game before the credits.

Elf drinking game

Elf is the best film on this list for a drinking game, because Buddy repeats himself: he shouts about Santa, eats sugar, and gets hurt, roughly every four minutes. The full Christmas version is on the best Christmas drinking games page. The short set for a movie night:

• Drink every time Buddy says “Santa”
• Drink when Buddy eats sugar (the spaghetti counts once)
• Drink when Buddy gets hurt or screams
• Drink whenever someone sings
• Two drinks when Buddy eats something that is not food
• Everyone drinks at the angry elf line
• Finish your drink when the sleigh takes off

The Office and other sitcoms

A sitcom is a movie drinking game that runs in twenty-minute episodes, which makes it easier to pace. The Office (US) is the standard, and the rules below have been played for years. The same shape works for Friends, Parks and Recreation, or anything with a cast of people who each have one habit.

• Drink when Michael says “that’s what she said”; drink twice if anyone else does
• Drink when Jim looks at the camera
• Drink when Pam answers the phone with “Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam”
• Drink when Dwight says “false” or mentions beets
• Drink when Michael does an impression
• Drink when Michael bullies Toby
• Drink when someone is called into the conference room
• Finish your drink on any cold open that ends with a fire alarm, a bat, or a sandwich

For other sitcoms, give each main character one habit (the catchphrase, the eye roll, the entrance line) and drink when they do it. Four characters, four rules, done.

Mean Girls drinking game

Mean Girls has more catchphrases per minute than any other film on this list, which is why the rules need thinning. Eight are listed; play five. The bus scene is a finish-your-drink moment in almost every version.

• Drink when someone says “fetch”
• Drink when Regina does something cruel
• Drink when Cady does a voiceover
• Drink when someone says “the Plastics”
• Drink when an entry from the Burn Book is read out
• Drink when Karen is called stupid, or proves it
• Drink twice when Gretchen reveals a secret
• Finish your drink when the bus hits Regina

The Wednesday rule (drink if anyone on screen wears pink on a Wednesday) appears in a lot of versions and is the one to add for a group that knows the film well.

Lord of the Rings drinking game

Three hours per film, so the rules are lighter per trigger than anything else here, and a marathon is off the table. The Sam-and-Frodo rule is the one every version agrees on.

• Drink when Sam says “Mr. Frodo”
• Drink when Frodo says “Sam”
• Drink when Frodo falls over, faints, or stares at the Ring
• Drink when someone says “my precious”
• Drink when Legolas says something everyone already knew
• Drink when Gimli makes a joke about his height
• Drink twice when Gandalf arrives at exactly the right time
• Finish your drink when the Fellowship breaks, the Rohirrim charge, or the Ring goes in the fire, depending on the film

The Frodo-and-Sam rules fire constantly in the second and third films. Cap them at one drink per scene, not per line.

Shrek drinking game

Shrek is short, loud, and built on repetition, which makes it an easy movie night. Works for any of the four films, and the rules below hold across them.

• Drink when Shrek shouts or grumbles
• Drink when Donkey talks for more than ten seconds without stopping
• Drink when a fairytale character appears for the first time
• Drink when Lord Farquaad (or the villain of the sequel) is condescending
• Drink when someone talks about onions, layers, or swamps
• Drink when a pop song plays
• Drink twice when Shrek and Fiona argue
• Finish your drink when there is a musical number in the finale

Rom-com template

Romantic comedies follow a script close enough that one rule set covers all of them. The rules below work for any meet-cute film, from the Nora Ephron era to the seasonal ones that come out in December.

• Drink when the two leads meet by accident
• Drink when a best friend gives advice that is clearly wrong
• Drink when a character runs somewhere (an airport, a wedding, a rooftop)
• Drink when someone almost says how they feel and then does not
• Drink when it rains during an important scene
• Drink when the lead has a job that seems to involve no work
• Drink twice on the misunderstanding that splits them up
• Finish your drink on the kiss at the end, and again if there is a public declaration first

Horror template

Horror films are formulaic in the opposite way: the triggers are about who is about to die. The template below is ours, built from the rules that appear across most slasher and haunted-house games, and it works for anything from the classics to the latest sequel.

• Drink when a character goes to investigate a noise alone
• Drink when someone says “hello?” into an empty room
• Drink when a phone has no signal
• Drink when a car will not start
• Drink when a jump scare is a cat, a friend, or a mirror
• Drink when someone trips while running
• Drink twice when a character says “I’ll be right back”
• Finish your drink when the killer is not actually dead

Build your own

Any film can be turned into a drinking game in five minutes, and a game built for the film you are about to watch is better than one copied from a list. The method:

1. List what the film is known for. A line, a habit, a visual, a type of scene. Eight to ten items. The trailer will remind you of most of them.
2. Guess how often each one happens. Every minute, every five minutes, twice a film. Be honest; a rule that fires every minute is the one that ends the night.
3. Pick five. Two common ones as sips, two medium ones as drinks, one rare one as a double. Drop the rest.
4. Choose one finish-your-drink moment. The scene everyone is waiting for. One per film.
5. Write them on a card and put it where everyone can see. Nobody remembers the rules after the first twenty minutes, and a card stops the film being paused to ask.

A sequel or a franchise marathon gets the same rules for every film, so the rules need to be lighter. A TV series gets the rules per episode and a break between them, which is the best-paced version of the game there is.

Tips

• Pace for a two-hour film, not a twenty-minute game. A movie drinking game fires from the first scene to the last, with no rounds and no natural breaks, so a rule that triggers every two minutes is sixty drinks by the credits. Keep the drinks to sips, keep the rules to five, and put water on the table before pressing play. The sign that the rules are too heavy is that nobody is watching the film by the halfway point; if that happens, drop two rules at the next slow scene rather than pushing through.
• Let people tap out of a rule. A mixed room has people who want to watch and people who want to play, and “I’m skipping the spell rule” should be allowed without comment.
• Pick the finish-your-drink moment before the film. Deciding it during the climax means arguing through the climax.
• Use the rare rules for the group jokes. The “finish your drink” on the bus in Mean Girls or the sleigh in Elf is the moment people remember, and it only works if it happens once.