The term “Adapted from a video game” tends to get a bad rap in cinema. Sure, there have been some ill advised video game movies, but as video games and technology have evolved, so has been the ability to properly adapt them. Of course, changing a story from such different mediums can mean a number of different things. In the case of the Until Dawn movie, being packed to the walls with monsters and madmen!
Clover (Ella Rubin, The Chair) still grieves over the mysterious disappearance and likely death of her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell, The Last Summer) just a year prior. Going on a roadtrip with her friends, they find themselves caught in a mysterious storm that sends them and their van to the welcome center of the beaten path of Glore Valley. An isolated land that they become trapped within, each night being killed by a different horror or beast only to return and repeat the night of terror. Can they break the cycle by surviving Until Dawn?
For those familiar with the original 2015 video game written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, the premise of the feature version written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler is a considerable, but necessary departure. For those unfamiliar, the game being a sort of interactive and playable movie with hours of gameplay, decisions that cannot be undone and change the storyline, and plot twists. So, in a way, the time loop plot is the perfect way of setting up the movie version. Ironically with the game having concrete decisions that are unchangeable.
The main cast consists of five people including Clover. Making it a bit of a Scooby Doo gang dynamic but with more melodrama. Of particular note is Megan (Ji-young Yoo, Freaky Tales) who has some latent psychic abilities that allow her to get a feel for the Glore Valley welcome center and sense the horrors within preemptively… not that it does much good in saving her life several times. Outside of that, there’s Hill played by perennial genre heavy Peter Stormare in another impressing and creepy performance. Stormare played a version of Hill in the original game thus making him the only actor to carry over.
Then of course, there’s the horrors our motley crew must face which are a highlight of the film. These challenges making their making it alive Until Dawn nigh impossible. Created for the film version, we have all manner of antagonists including a masked Jason Voorhees like slasher with a rotting face and mask who primarily wields a might sledgehammer that he puts to good use pulverizing his victims to bits. A shadowy giant is spotted at one point, putting driving away out of the question. And another carryover from the games is the notorious flesh eating Wendigo, though in a far different context. There’s also another and surprising point of supernatural hazard that I do not want to spoil, but leads to an ample amount of gore and surprise!
Director David F. Sandberg, known for shocking audiences with Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation does a phenomenal job of setting up scares and kill sequences that are sure to make audiences scream and jump just as much as the victims. Being a timeloop story, Until Dawn does a solid job of killing off the same characters over, and over, and over again. Particularly in a fashion that utilizes so many different creatures and dangers that evoke other sub-genres in horror. We have a slasher killer, supernatural ghosts, the aforementioned cannibal wendigo, and so on. Some of the wendigo chase sequences were so intense, they gave me nightmares!
While the basic premise works, the overall plot didn’t quite synch together. The overarching themes of grief and letting go felt a little hollow and cliche. As well, the third act plot twist involving Hill and he secret of Glore Valley felt undeveloped. Kind of like a less knit Silent Hill.
Still, Until Dawn like most good video games was a lot of fun and an entertaining ride. As a fan of monster mash movies that feature a variety of ungodly horrors, this one delivered.
Until Dawn in Theaters April 25th, 2025
