Until Dawn (2025) Screen Gems/Horror RT: 103 minutes Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, gore, language throughout) Director: David F. Sandberg Screenplay: Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler Music: Benjamin Wallfisch Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre Release date: April 25, 2025 (US) Cast: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-Young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare, Tibor Szauerwein.
Rating: ** ½
No surprise, I wouldn’t have known Until Dawn was a video game if I didn’t see the PlayStation logo that preceded the trailer. It’s one the many, many popular video game that I never heard of until some genius decided to turn it into a movie. The genius in this instance is David F. Sandberg who also directed Lights Out (2016), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and the two Shazam movies (2019-23). He’s a competent enough filmmaker; I have no complaints about his body of work. He does okay with Until Dawn, I just wish he put more energy into it. It could have been a really fun ride considering its whacked-out premise.
I recently made a new friend at my local AMC, an avid filmgoer like myself. He’s a young fellow in his 20s and knew all about the game. He gave me a quick synopsis after the movie. The storyline is different, but the basic idea is the same. A group of young people relive the same night over and over again. Their objective is to stay alive until dawn which is hard to do with a psycho killer running around. If they die, they start all over again. So basically what we’re dealing with here is a slasher variation of Groundhog Day (1993) with elements of other horror movies- Evil Dead 1 & 2 (1981-87), The Blair Witch Project (2000), The Descent (2005), Silent Hill (2006) and The Cabin in the Woods (2012)- thrown in.
The set-up is pretty standard. A group of young people are looking for the missing older sister of one of their own, a troubled girl named Clover (Rubin, Anora). She’s had a hard time of it since her mother died about a year earlier. Not long after, older sis Melanie (Mitchell, Good Trouble) left for New York and disappeared without a trace. Clover is joined by her ex-boyfriend Max (Cimino, Annabelle Comes Home) who hopes to get back together with her, bff Nina (A’zion, the Hellraiser reboot), her bf Abel (Cameli, Saved by the Bell) and psychic Megan (Yoo, Freaky Tales).
The gang stops at a gas station where the attendant (Stormare, Fargo) informs Clover that people go missing all the time from a nearby remote valley. Naturally, that’s where the kids go next. That’s when things get weird. It rains all the way there until they hit the property line of this house. No rain on the property, still raining on the other side. Inside the supposedly vacant house, time appears to have stopped in 1998. The kids find a guest book with each name written 13 times. And what’s with the hourglass on the wall?
Before they can process everything, a deformed freak in clown makeup appears and does the old slice-and-dice on all of them. Then BOOM, they’re right back where they started when they entered the house. The victims-to-be (many times over) realize they’re doomed to repeat the whole night again and again until they make it through the night without being slaughtered.
There are Easter eggs aplenty in Until Dawn. They’ll mostly be of interest to gamers and fanboys. The main one would have to be Stormare who played Dr. Alan Hill, the overseer of the chaos, in the game. He reprises the role for the film. My question now is this. Is it really necessary to discuss any of the performances? It’s not like Until Dawn is some kind of acting showcase. Character development isn’t even an issue here. There is none. The actors do a fine job, I guess. They deliver the performances the material deserves. I will say that these young people are far less annoying than the ones in Hell of a Summer. I wasn’t rooting for their demise. I didn’t really care if they lived either.
Sandberg’s approach to the material feels disappointingly half-hearted. It’s best described as mechanical. He mostly just goes through the motions. To his credit, he doesn’t skimp on the gore. Until Dawn has a fair amount. The best bit is easily when the kids explode after drinking water from the sink. There are also a couple of effective “BOO!” scenes. The problem is many of the scenes are too underlit to see what’s happening. The hyperactive overediting doesn’t help much either. Sandberg’s unfortunate creative choices put something of a damper on the proceedings.
Despite its shortcomings, I did enjoy Until Dawn to a certain degree. It’s not as bad as some of the video game adaptations I’ve endured over the years. However, it’s still a video game adaptation. It can only be so good. I can’t speak for fans of the original source. As a middle-aged movie fan, I thought it was a little better than okay. It’s watchable. It’s weird. I just wish Sandberg tapped into the wild side a bit more than he does. Until Dawn simply isn’t as fun as it should be.
