Until Dawn Review: A Bloody But Frustrating Adaptation

Video game adaptations are becoming big business for Hollywood, with successes like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie putting up serious numbers. It should come as no surprise that the macabre side of the video game aisle would once again gain the entertainment industry’s attention. Enter Until Dawn, the latest from Sony Pictures that attempts to add a new layer to the 2015 game, which placed players into a wild horror adventure of their own. With David F. Sandberg in the director’s chair for this new horror romp, does Until Dawn manage to live up to its source material while carving out a new horror franchise for theaters?

Until Dawn follows protagonist Clover (Ella Rubin) as she finds herself trying to discover what happened to her sister, who mysteriously vanished in a remote valley. Joined by her friends who are attempting to help their comrade put the past to bed, the gang finds themselves trapped in a horrific loop. Much like a sinister Groundhog Day, the cast of characters are besieged by various spooky threats while being brought back from the dead, only to attempt to survive new horror hassles. The one way that they’ll be able to survive is by lasting until dawn.

Until Dawn starts by wasting little time in almost immediately diving into the setting. Viewers are given a brief introduction to our “Scooby Gang” here, with each filling different parts of the classic horror tropes of youngsters trying to survive a particularly scary evening. Clover and Max (Michael Cimino) are fresh off an uncomfortable break-up, Nina (Odessa A’zion) and Abel (Belmont Cameli) are fresh into their new relationship while on seemingly shaky ground, and Megan (Ji-young Yoo) is a bit too into the supernatural for her own good. Meanwhile, Peter Stormare does his thing and eats up his screen time as the enigmatic Dr. Hill.

For those who might not have played the original game, SuperMassive Games’ Until Dawn focuses on a band of youngsters in a remote winter cabin. The unique game experience sees the protagonists beguiled by a series of horror threats that feel like a blending of familiar tropes from the spooky side of the entertainment world. With stars like Hayden Panettiere, Raimi Malik, and Brett Dalton rounding out the cast, the video game’s premise has some familiarities with the movie but ultimately is its own beast, with a quite different plot from what David F. Sandberg directs here. Rather than presenting a time-loop setting, the source material often gives players flashes of what is about to take place in the immediate future.

Let’s go over some of the positives of the film; Until Dawn does a very solid job when it leans heavily into its outlandish premise. When the main characters find themselves trapped inside this hellish time loop, viewers are treated to almost something of a horror anthology where you don’t necessarily know what comes next. Two scenes, in particular, make great use of this setting, the first being a cramped bathroom scene with the entire main cast and the second being said cast attempting to watch recordings of the horrors they’ve experienced, adding something of an effective “found footage” aesthetic to the film. Yes, there are familiar threats from the game, including the bloodthirsty wendigos and a slasher villain who could stand alongside Jason Voorhees and not miss a beat, but Sandberg and crew injected other interesting elements that many fans of the original game might not see coming.

When it comes to the general gore of Until Dawn, it certainly earns its R rating. It’s interesting to think about how Terrifier’s Art the Clown has seemingly unleashed studios’ ability to let directors and special effects teams go wild with the brutality, but you won’t find this horror nut complaining. Until Dawn has quite a few shockingly gruesome scenes that are sure to make some theater-goers squirm, as they’re more than willing to once again lean heavily into the absurd fun of some of these head-popping extravaganzas. Unfortunately, with this video game adaptation, all that glitters isn’t gold.

The negatives of Until Dawn, both as its own thing that isn’t a direct translation of the game and simultaneously as a part of the game’s universe, drag down the film that otherwise has glimpses of greatness. The main cast of characters is quite archetypical in terms of their overall characterization, almost acting as a means to an end with little other meat on the bone. We don’t get nearly enough time to get a good sense of these characters or care about them, as we are almost immediately thrown into the horror funhouse premise.

It’s almost impossible for me to lay out where Until Dawn stumbles in relation to the game without diving into serious spoiler territory, but the movie attempts to have its cake and eat it, too, and in doing so, completely stumbles on both fronts. When it came to the original PlayStation title, the reasoning behind why there was a slasher villain, wendigos, Saw-like traps, and the supernatural all in one setting was explained quite well. All of these horror elements worked in tandem under one umbrella, but unfortunately, the same cannot be said for its live-action adaptation.

Until Dawn buckles under the weight of just how much the film attempts to throw at you, with little to no explanation as to how these elements work in tandem with one another. For fans of the original game, the movie almost feels like a complete misunderstanding of the universe that SuperMassive Games had created. There are countless questions that are simply never answered in the movie, or at least not in a way that has the air of satisfying ambiguity. When you try thinking about elements such as “Why is a town rising from the Earth?” or “Who is the Glore Witch?” or “How does time keep repeating itself?” answers are never revealed in any satisfying way. The final scene only adds more confusion to the overall story and its place in the SuperMassive universe.

Until Dawn ultimately feels like a missed opportunity, unable to carve out its own identity or work within the original game universe. While some scares can be decent, the crushing weight of its story elements and lack of cohesion make this horror movie flounder.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Until Dawn lands in theaters on April 25th.