‘Until Dawn’ Review: An Entertaining But Confused Video Game Adaptation
There’s no denying that trying to adapt any video game into a single feature film is a seemingly insurmountable task. Fans will never be satisfied because you always have to sacrifice something in the name of trans-media adaptation. With David F. Sandberg’s latest directorial outing, a cinematic imagining of the hugely successful horror game Until Dawn, he and co-writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler took the Resident Evil route: they changed the fundamental DNA of a beloved game while also simultaneously and clunkily trying to shoehorn in lore from the original story.
Here, the result is a nasty and entertaining but deeply confusing film that never skimps on gore but goes too complicated in its story to justify its existence as an official Until Dawn adaptation. Thankfully, incredible practical effects, creative kills, and a stellar roster of rising stars save the film from falling into complete disaster.
Ella Rubin plays Clover, a young woman searching for her sister Melanie, who’s been missing for a year. In honor of the first anniversary of her disappearance, Clover is retracing her sister’s steps with her friends in tow: ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Nina (Odessa A’Zion), as well as Nina’s latest fling, Abe (Belmont Cameli). Clover is not handling her grief well, and her friends—her only family now—want to help her find closure.
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So, after a strange exchange with a gas station attendant (Peter Stomare), the group ends up in Glore Valley, a place with a high number of missing persons. And they’re all about to find out why. As they drive through a violent storm, trying to find their way home, their car suddenly bursts into a clearing, complete with a quaint house marked as the Glore Valley Visitor’s Center. Only, there’s no one inside and nothing but a guest book to offer them clues. With no cell service and a storm still raging around them, they decide to look around.
Little do they know that as the sun sinks behind the trees, they’ve entered a strange cosmic machine, and an inverted hourglass marks their first night of trying to survive until dawn. Their first round of murders comes at the hands of a masked serial killer. After they all fall victim to his pickaxe, the group all wake up back at the beginning of their night, alive but very much aware of what’s happened to them. They felt themselves die, watched each other die, and now they’re back, mostly healed but still bearing bruises from their respective violent murders. They realize that every night reveals a new hell, never repeated from the previous death. But if they don’t find a way to survive until dawn by their 13th death, they’ll never find their way home…
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This approach, instead of trying to remake the narrative of the game itself, chooses to mimic the action of dying over and over again in a video game, while also leaning into the Groundhog Day of it all, with a healthy amount of The Cabin In The Woods poured on top. This, in turn, lets Sandberg play with different subgenres and experiment with forms he’s never gotten to use before, like found footage (used for a prolonged sequence when watching recordings on Abe’s cell phone). There’s so much passion poured into every night’s monster, with every team firing on all cylinders to craft something scary, exhausting, and existentially overwhelming.
But where Until Dawn falls apart is the script’s attempt to connect back to the game in the third act. Unfortunately, Dauberman and Butler made the fascinating decision of incorporating the Wendigo back into the plot, the core monster of the original game. I won’t spoil how exactly they’re brought into the film’s story, but with a film that deviates so far from the original Until Dawn, it’s frustrating to see them go back to a figure constantly appropriated from Indigenous folklore for empty metaphors about hunger and greed. There are a plethora of beasts at the team’s disposal, and yet they decided to lean on tired tropes in an attempt to tie the film and game back together.
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However, the incorporation of these monsters only further convolutes the plot instead of bringing it all together. This dedication to making sure there’s a more explicit or direct connection to the game is the biggest downfall of Until Dawn. The first and second acts showcase a massive sense of creative and gleeful cruelty from the entire filmmaking team, but bringing it all back to the original property is where everything starts to fall apart. The sense of fun falls in the name of checking boxes, and the first two acts just feel like a horror anthology more than a cohesive narrative.
Fortunately, the film’s cast saves the day, keeping the movie afloat with their seemingly effortless chemistry and banter (sans a few cheesy dialogue exchanges). Rubin carries the silent Clover squarely on her capable shoulders, while Yoo secretly steals the show as the psychically sensitive Megan, who becomes the spiritual punching bag of the film’s strange forces. Cameli’s Abe is a loveable himbo-turned-asshole, which is required for an Until Dawn adaptation, with A’Zion and Cimino rounding out a core five that genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. And of course, let’s say there’s more than meets the eye of the perfectly evil Stomare, who is the king of playing impish villains you love to despise.
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Sandberg knows how to direct a horror movie, which he illustrates in spades through his ability to move through subgenres and craft uniquely disgusting death sequences that never feel repetitive. Unfortunately, Until Dawn’s script isn’t cohesive enough to really let Sandberg spread his wings and deliver something special. Frustrating story aside, Until Dawn does deliver some of the nastiest and gnarliest kills of the year, which are supported by a stellar cast who game for absolutely anything. Come for the monsters, stay for the chemistry, and don’t come in with big expectations, especially if you’re a fan of the original game.
Until Dawn is out now in theaters.
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Until Dawn (2025)
Summary
Frustrating story aside, Until Dawn does deliver some of the nastiest and gnarliest kills of the year, which are supported by a stellar cast.
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