Until Dawn review

UNTIL DAWN: 

BY THE NUMBERS HORROR MOVIE BASED ON POPULAR PLAYSTATION GAME! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

SCREEN GEMS

Ella Rubin in Until Dawn

 

            The world of the survival horror game, Until Dawn hits the big screen in…Until Dawn, the new horror film from director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle Creation, Shazam! 1 and 2) based on the 2015 PlayStation video game of the same name. Unlike previous PlayStation film adaptations like Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted, and Gran Turismo, I have never played the Until Dawn game before nor do I have any knowledge of it aside from what was shown in the movie’s trailer. 

            I hear the game is great and maybe I’ll finally experience it for myself sometime soon, but for right now, I’m just talking about the movie based on it and judging it on its own merits. The PlayStation adaptations have had a bumpy history from the phenomenal TV adaptation of The Last of Us and the decent Gran Turismo movie to the polarizing Ratchet & Clank and Uncharted films (The latter was financially successful despite mixed critical reactions) so, where does Until Dawn fall under? I’m putting it under mediocre like Uncharted! 

            It isn’t a terrible movie and there are things to admire about it like the atmosphere and creative kills and monster designs, but it’s a very by the numbers horror movie with a setup and stock characters we’ve seen a million times before in other movies. Even the novelty of the night starting over after the people die isn’t that original as Blumhouse’sHappy Death Day already did something like that and did it way better. 

            The film follows Clover (Ella Rubin-Gossip Girl, The Girl from Plainville, Anora) and her friends heading to a remote valley one year after her sister mysteriously disappeared to search for answers. When they come across an abandoned visitor center and start exploring it, they find themselves stalked by a mysterious masked killer that murders them one by one only to find themselves back at the beginning of the evening. 

            Trapped in the valley and forced to relive the same night over and over with a different threat more terrifying than the last, the group realizes they have a limited number of deaths left and the only way to escape is to survive…until dawn. 

            The film also stars Michael Cimino (Love, Victor, Annabelle Comes Home, Hamster & Gretel) as Max, Odessa A’zion (Ghosts, Hellraiser (2022), Fresh Kills) as Nina, Ji-young Yoo (Moxie, Expats, Freaky Tales) as Megan, Belmont Cameli (Saved by the Bell (2020), Along for the Ride, The Alto Knights) as Abe, Maia Mitchell (Mortified, Trapped, Good Trouble) as Clover’s missing sister Melanie, and Peter Stormare (The Big Lebowski, Armageddon, Minority Report) reprising his role from the game as Dr. Hill. 

            Overall, Until Dawn has a lot of things going for it like the ways the characters are killed, the unexpectedness of what the house will throw at them next, and the creepy atmosphere, unfortunately it’s a generic haunted house slasher movie with stock characters and uninspired storytelling. The characters are very one-note and underdeveloped as they’re simply thrown right in with clunky exposition dialogue in hopes of filling in the cracks. 

            The actors themselves do fine with the material, but nothing about them stand out or make them compelling. Honestly, they make the stock characters from The Cabin in the Woods look like Sidney Prescott from Scream or Rocky from Don’t Breathe by comparison, at least they had some character development. 

            The plot is very standard haunted house movie tropes, characters snoop around places they shouldn’t be, make dumb decisions, and the inevitable jump scares. There is one creative scare involving a character getting possessed and her voice changes into all the different people that went missing, that was a legitimately cool and creepy sequence. 

            It’s also unapologetically gory with tons of meaty and fleshy explosions of red painting the rooms. People getting ripped in half, limbs getting bitten off, legs caught in bear traps, and death by water…I’ll just leave it at that. 

            The designs of all the monsters and masked people trying to kill the protagonists are very creative and lead to some fun, creepy scenes. So, where the movie drops the ball on story and characters, it at least succeeds in creature designs and bloody deaths. 

            I also like how the movie looks in terms of the production design and cinematography that effectively capture a bleak and suspenseful atmosphere. This may be David F. Sandberg’s weakest movie so far, but he certainly didn’t slouch on its visual look. 

            I’m not sure what fans of the game will think of this movie as it is a very generic horror movie and video game adaptation that reminds you of other, better films of the genre. Similar to Five Nights at Freddy’s and even the Minecraft movie out now, maybe see it just for the homages and easter eggs to the source material and seeing concepts from the PlayStation game brought to life on the big screen, everyone else should just go see Sinners instead.