{"id":11784,"date":"2025-04-30T11:56:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11784"},"modified":"2025-05-17T16:52:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T20:52:59","slug":"until-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/04\/30\/until-dawn\/","title":{"rendered":"Until Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Until Dawn<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screen Gems\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, gore, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David F. Sandberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 25, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A\u2019zion, Ji-Young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare, Tibor Szauerwein.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0No surprise, I wouldn\u2019t have known Until Dawn<\/strong> was a video game if I didn\u2019t see the PlayStation logo that preceded the trailer. It\u2019s 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\u2019s a competent enough filmmaker; I have no complaints about his body of work. He does okay with Until Dawn<\/strong>, I just wish he put more energy into it. It could have been a really fun ride considering its whacked-out premise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I recently made a new friend at my local AMC, an avid filmgoer like myself. He\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s 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\u2019zion, the Hellraiser reboot), her bf Abel (Cameli, Saved by the Bell) and psychic Megan (Yoo, Freaky Tales).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s where the kids go next. That\u2019s 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\u2019s with the hourglass on the wall?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before 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\u2019re right back where they started when they entered the house. The victims-to-be (many times over) realize they\u2019re doomed to repeat the whole night again and again until they make it through the night without being slaughtered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are Easter eggs aplenty in Until Dawn<\/strong>. They\u2019ll 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\u2019s not like Until Dawn<\/strong> is some kind of acting showcase. Character development isn\u2019t 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\u2019t rooting for their demise. I didn\u2019t really care if they lived either.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sandberg\u2019s approach to the material feels disappointingly half-hearted. It\u2019s best described as mechanical. He mostly just goes through the motions. To his credit, he doesn\u2019t skimp on the gore. Until Dawn<\/strong> 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 \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. The problem is many of the scenes are too underlit to see what\u2019s happening. The hyperactive overediting doesn\u2019t help much either. Sandberg\u2019s unfortunate creative choices put something of a damper on the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Despite its shortcomings, I did enjoy Until Dawn<\/strong> to a certain degree. It\u2019s not as bad as some of the video game adaptations I\u2019ve endured over the years. However, it\u2019s still a video game adaptation. It can only be so good. I can\u2019t speak for fans of the original source. As a middle-aged movie fan, I thought it was a little better than okay. It\u2019s watchable. It\u2019s weird. I just wish Sandberg tapped into the wild side a bit more than he does. Until Dawn <\/strong>simply isn\u2019t as fun as it should be.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until Dawn (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screen Gems\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody horror violence, gore, language throughout)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David F. Sandberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Benjamin Wallfisch\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 25, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A\u2019zion, Ji-Young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare, Tibor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Until-Dawn-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11796,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11784\/revisions\/11796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}