Sean Parker
When word of an Until Dawn movie came to light last year, there was a lot of buzz. The PlayStation game, beloved by fans all over the globe, seemed perfectly suited for a horror adaptation. The story of a snowed-in mountaintop retreat where monsters, a masked flamethrower-wielding psycho, a sanatorium, and a collapsed mine all collide with the game’s split-second decision making, key to ensuring the survival of every character. The star power of Hayden Panettiere (Scream VI), Rami Malek (No Time to Die), and Peter Stormare (Fargo), combined with the game’s fresh dialogue and sharply written story by Larry Fessenden (Blackout) and Graham Reznick (Deadwax), made it a gaming experience unlike any other.
When the first trailer for the Until Dawn movie dropped back in January, the game’s fanbase didn’t take too kindly to it when they found the film wasn’t interested in keeping the plot the same as their platinum-selling hit game. As a fan myself, I expected as much. Direct adaptations of games don’t serve a huge purpose, especially when you can just play the game, but the Until Dawn trailer certainly brought cause for concern. Learning that Fessenden and Reznick weren’t invited to collaborate (or even cameo) on the project was also irksome.
Fessenden told Gizmodo’s Cheryl Eddy, “We did pitch it five or seven years ago, all the way up in the ranks at Sony, I think. And I think our idea was maybe too whackadoodle for them; we were trying to lean into the fact that this is a video game already, and I can’t remember—Graham’s smarter than me, he can remember—but it was too eccentric for them.”
Writing duties for the 2025 film are instead supplied by Gary Dauberman (IT, Annabelle Comes Home, Salem’s Lot) and Blair Butler (The Invitation, Polaroid), while David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) directs. The story starts with some similarities to the game, with a group of gorgeous twenty-somethings on a road trip to help their friend Clover (Anora’s Ella Rubin) find clues and get closure for her missing sister Melanie (Good Trouble’s Maia Mitchell) on the one-year anniversary of her disappearance.
After catching a lead as to where Melanie could have gone, Clover and her friends find themselves trapped in a torrential downpour that leads them to the Glore Valley visitors center. Blocked behind a wall of fierce rain and surrounded by a forest of monsters, the visitors’ center is not at all what it appears to be. Night falls quickly, almost with the flick of a wrist, as Nina (Hellraiser’s Odessa A’zion) signs her name in the guest book, and Abe (The Alto Knights’ Belmont Cameli) reveals a “missing” poster with Melanie’s picture. Through multiple series of their own blood-spattering murders, the group begins to realize they’re stuck in an infinite loop of gory, gruesome death and discover that the only way to return home is to survive Until Dawn, or face the prospect of continually respawning in a never-ending nightmare.
Early reactions to the film this month left me very hopeful for what was coming from Until Dawn, with many comparing the movie to Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods. However, having just now come from seeing Until Dawn for myself, I would like to see the whackadoodle version, please.
Viewers’ assessments in describing Until Dawn as an adjacent experience to The Cabin in the Woods isn’t wrong, you just have to really reduce that film down to its basic elements to get there. A place in the middle of nowhere: check. Trope-heavy atmosphere: check. Mess of supernatural creatures: check. A bizarro setup where the characters on screen have as little an idea about what’s going on as the audience: check. And an overseer pulling the strings: check. Anyone got horror bingo?
The difference to me is plain to see. The Cabin in the Woods (for as different as it was at the time) was written as an all rise feature, building and building on trope after trope until what it built ultimately destroys itself, simultaneously showing the power of horror movie subversion by subverting horror fandom and bloodlust. It could be argued that it plays a bit on consumerism and the horror movie execs in charge, too.
Regardless, it makes The Cabin in the Woods an odd choice for Until Dawn to mimic, with its underlying themes of propelling yourself out of anxiety and depression by facing the reality that you’re going to die and accomplish nothing with your life if you don’t. While that sounds slightly motivational (in an existential horror kind of way), I can assure you it’s as tone-deaf as telling someone with depression to cheer up and smile. Do you think that depressed people are unaware of their mortality? That’s not how that works. And, when I consider all this generation has endured and what it most likely will face in the future…I think we deserve the whackadoodle version.
Another core concept of Until Dawn is the group’s dynamic to stick together in these horror situations. A rational thought given the circumstances. Yet, almost every time the group gets divided, it’s because Clover runs off to find her sister, leaving the group in a Scooby-Doo scenario of running around aimlessly. And, for how much Clover and Melanie’s relationship means to Clover, we only ever see them as sisters once in the film, which doesn’t help the character building the game was undeniably great at.
Except for Michael Cimino’s (Annabelle Comes Home) Max, who finds ways to be resiliently communicative through body language as he struggles with no longer being Clover’s leading man, most characters are exceptionally one-note. Ji-young Yoo’s (Freaky Tales) Megan has pseudo-medium talents that are only ever mentioned for advancements in the storyline and never manifest into traits the character embodies beyond a couple of opportune moments. And Cameli’s Abe, who the movie makes sure you know is a psych major, offers many views psychiatrists would likely balk at. These characters are not fully fleshed out, but I don’t think that’s the fault of the actors playing them, all of which are giving pretty damn fine performances. Somewhere between the writing and the exasperating edits lies the problem, and I think a good understanding of these characters was lost.
While I might be going a little harsh on Until Dawn, it’s worth mentioning that I didn’t have the worst time. Part of me settled into some hate-watch aspects of the film, laughing at unintentionally funny scenes or laughing at the awkwardness of the dead-silent theater when every joke failed to get a response. But, I did find some overall enjoyment in the film’s creative death sequences and set design. While the look of some areas seemed to more closely resemble various places in Resident Evil games than Until Dawn, the lavish sets and production design help craft an atmosphere and stir the viewer.
It’s pretty apparent this is a sound stage film, but as the movie progresses, the sets get bigger, weirder, and wilder. Essentially, the longer the film goes, the more fun it gets, and it genuinely hits its stride on tension in the last half hour when the group finally begins to figure out the escape room we’ve watched them fumble around in for the last seventy minutes. Sandberg is able to do what he does best during the film’s climax, leading to brief yet effective white-knuckle moments.
When it comes to tying the film and the game together, there is a lot of crossover between Until Dawn iterations. Sure, Stormare is the crux of the cross-media franchise is fixing itself to, but there are a lot of references, including an ending that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you start thinking about it. Megan wearing a butterfly necklace is a nice touch, though I wish there had been more focus on the group’s decision-making as they enlighten themselves and explore new options each night.
Also, only about a month ago, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 presented a similar storyline. Yet, the wild unpredictability of Robert Pattinson’s Mickey and Bong Joon Ho’s and Edward Ashton’s uncomfortable writing helps that film build its characters and story, providing far better suspense with the use of some dark, physical comedy. Given a specific joke in Until Dawn that alludes to Groundhog Day, I get the feeling the writers tried to keep their distance from the kind of death-o-rama sequences Bill Murray, Robert Pattinson, and Edge of Tomorrow‘s Tom Cruise’s characters go through. Yet, in a short but excellently applied found footage sequence, it’s exactly what they end up going for.
Perhaps the thing I’m most angry about with Until Dawn is that it is just a poor interpretation of the game I love so much. While there are meta elements to the game in quickly responding to cues or facing certain tragedy, the movie feels like there aren’t any stakes. Not only have they hastily thrown every horror movie cliché at the wall to see what may resonate with an audience, but the filmmakers also decided that countless respawns, in their story about wasting energy on depression in this one precious life that you have, is somehow a good analogy. But, maybe being a fan of the game is part of the problem, and fans of the film will have a nice lead-in for their first playthrough. However, if you ask me, you’ll have a better time skipping the movie and picking up your controller instead.
Until Dawn is now playing in theaters everywhere, and the video game is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam.
UNTIL DAWN – New Movie Trailer (HD)
⏳ ǝɯᴉʇ uᴉ ʞɔnʇs ⌛️ Watch the new trailer for #UntilDawnMovie – exclusively in theatres April 25. Visit our site: https://untildawn.movie/ Follow Us on Social: https://www.facebook.com/UntilDawnMovie https://x.com/UntilDawn_Movie https://www.instagram.com/untildawnmovie https://www.tiktok.com/@untildawnmovie Subscribe to the Sony Pictures YouTube Channel for more exclusive content: http://bit.ly/SonyPicsSubscribe One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers.
