Sony PicturesUntil Dawn is a forgettable oddity: a video game adaptation that admirably strives to distinguish itself from its liberating source material… and somehow, it still feels redundant.
On paper, the original game seems ripe for a big-screen treatment: it’s a slasher movie retooled into a scary, grim, and exhilarating interactive nightmare. It never entered the pop culture sphere on the level of Minecraft or God of War, but in the words of PlayStation’s president, it was a “sleeper hit.”
Unfortunately, that argument is easy to counter. Ultimately, it was a project conceived to offer a more immersive experience to horror heads (moviegoers and gamers alike). Reverse-engineering its ode to (and spin on) the genre is a huge risk.
Its approach is… a choice. Don’t count on seeing Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere and co. (though Peter Stormare stars and steals the film), nor should you expect much in the way of direct adaptation. A few little Easter eggs aside, this is a new stab at the IP – and, despite its best, increasingly bloody efforts, it doesn’t always work.
What is Until Dawn about?
One year after Melanie (Maia Mitchell) mysteriously disappeared, Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends try to retrace the steps of her “final journey.” After an ominous tip, they end up at a house in Glore Valley, creepily separated from the rain drenching its surroundings.
When they walk into the house, something seems… off. There are pictures of missing people everywhere, and someone steals their car and revs it threateningly from the road. Suddenly, a wall-mounted hourglass flips, and they’re all killed in barbaric, grotesque ways. Once they all die, they realize they’re stuck in a time loop of suffering, and there’s one way out: they need to survive until dawn.
Its Descent-lite opening scene – brief, asphyxiating, visceral – is well-employed. Sadly, the movie’s time-wimey and saccharine plot devices (the missing sister and the hourglass) are pretty tiresome, bar the carnage they afford.
Nothing about the movie feels especially novel (they even make a point of saying it’s like “whatever the f**k that movie’s called”) – something that can’t be said about its predecessor, which truly ported the heart-thumping, giddy scares of the genre into another medium.
Also, consider this: in Until Dawn, there are no do-overs. If you make one wrong turn, pick up one wrong thing, the butterfly effect comes into play: when people die, they’re gone for good. It’s a game about consequence as much as fear, and while the film kind of interrogates the latter, stripping away one of the game’s most emotionally taxing aspects feels like a mistake.
I suppose, though, without the time loop, the entire project comes into question – and maybe it should.
The Until Dawn cast is saved by one returning face
Sony PicturesUntil Dawn has one of the most clichéd, cookie-cutter casts in recent memory, and their performances do very little to support a script that’ll make your eyes glaze over more than water. Rubin isn’t a convincing lead, but they’re mostly just playthings for violence, until trite drama gets in the way – Evil Dead (the 2013 remake) and Cabin in the Woods remain the best examples of how to put an ensemble like this together.
The screenplay is a shame, considering it comes from Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, the former of whom penned the underrated script for It: Chapter Two and Annabelle: Creation. The studio described it as an “R-rated love letter to the horror genre”, and while it provides heaps of action and gore, it fails to achieve what even worse movies pull off: having a single likable character to root for (or even one so loathsome it’s delicious to watch them die).
The exception is Peter Stormare, whose twist on Hill (a role that’s much different in the game) suddenly makes the movie seem worth watching, surrounded by fresh-faced actors trying to find their charisma while he makes it look effortless (and often amusing).
Until Dawn has one saving grace: the kills
Sony PicturesSome of the deaths are preposterous (complimentary), whether it’s spontaneous combustion with gloopy, wall-splattering physical effects, smooshed heads, or bodies ripped apart and spilling out onto the floor.
It’s not just the yuckiness of the kills, either. David F. Sandberg knows how to stage these bursts of ultraviolence – he makes it clear very early that he doesn’t pull his punches, blades, sledgehammers, etc – and even if the film as a whole is a bit of a shrug, there’s fun to be had in the loops of terrified, inevitable brutality.
One sequence is a standout: no spoilers, but it’s a montage of phone-recorded deaths that made me hungry for another modestly budgeted, zeitgeisty found-footage horror movie. One thing seems certain: this will come and go, screenings will become few and far between, and it’ll get market-corrected by Final Destination: Bloodlines in a few weeks.
Dexerto Review Score: 2/5 – Poor
Say what you want about A Minecraft Movie, but it understood its audience. Until Dawn is closer in spirit to one of the naff video game movies of the 2000s: misjudged, woefully acted, and forgettable. Play the game instead, trust me.
Until Dawn hits cinemas on April 25. Check out our list of the best video game movies and the best horror films, and see what else is dropping this year with our 2025 movies calendar.
For more information on how we score TV shows and movies, check out our scoring guidelines here.
