Until Dawn (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Have you played the video game Until Dawn? The 2015 release is basically an interactive film itself, a darkly beautiful and quietly brilliant choose-your-own-adventure experience I played with a former coworker in a single sitting that had us genuinely scared and delighted. A smart and knowing variation on the slasher subgenre of horror, the game involves a group of young people stuck on a snowy mountain trying to stay alive while being stalked and hunted by a mysterious killer. Its cast includes Rami Malek, Hayden Panetierre, and Peter Stormare, and the goal is to keep as many people alive as possible... or not, which is also a valid choice in the game's mechanics. So when I heard a film was being adapted from the game, I was admittedly nervous. Not because it's basically already a film, which it is, but because a film by necessity (I say, knowing full well that Black Mirror: Bandersnatch can offer a different style of film-making and -viewing for audiences these days) has some limited options for narration. 

Maybe that's not fair. After all, cult classic Clue (1985) provides multiple endings within its single runtime; more to the point, our era of multiverses has allowed for any number of possibilities in terms of a single plot having multiple outcomes or arcs. Heck, even a miniseries exploring many different narratives could have been a more fruitful avenue for this IP to pursue. It's not for me to say which would be "better" or not, but I can say that, as it is, Until Dawn takes the seemingly endless possibilities of its premise and squanders nearly all of them. 

A metafictional, postmodern Groundhog Day in a world not dissimilar from The Cabin in the Woods, Until Dawn concerns Ella Rubin and her four friends (they have character names, but who cares?) as they drive to a remote visitor center in Glore Valley, an old mining town where visitors apparently routinely go missing, looking for her missing sister. Stranded by nightfall and torrential rains, they investigate the center and are almost immediately killed one by one. Soon enough, they reawaken to discover their own missing persons posters, learning alarmingly quickly that the day will repeat endlessly as they continue to fall prey to death in its many forms. The guestbook's limited names and a large hourglass spinning around indicate to them their purgatorial fate. As such, the film's structure allows for a series of small-scale horror sequences of varying styles and methods. 

Too bad, then, that all are derivative and mostly devoid of actual scares. What annoys me isn't the premise, or its mishandled linear narrative; Edge of Tomorrow is functionally the same thing in a sci-fi action/war format, and it's excellently handled. And it's not the endless options of horror-fueled violence, because that just makes it cool: what genre tropes will be employed next? Killer clowns? Werewolves? Mad scientists? Extradimensional monsters? Home invasion? Ghosts? "Yes, and" is the rousing answer. But director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation, Shazam!, Shazam! Fury of the Gods) and writer Gary Dauberman (Annabelle Comes Home, 'Salem's Lot, writer of the Annabelle series and Andy Muschietti's It duology) don't seem to know what to do with the plethora of options at their disposal, choosing to play things safe and predictably. Instead of changing aesthetically with each rest of the hourglass, they proceed with the same visually dark, early-2000s style of their vision, depressingly flat in ocular dynamics, repeating the same night in the same way with the same rhythm of kills. There are a few fun moments, notably an explosive jump-scare related to drinking the house's water, but anything of note in that regard was spoiled by the film's trailers.

Worse, none of the characters are memorable or interesting, only generally a terrible group of "friends" who end up running around, screaming, and dying without distinction before returning yet again to discuss their various traumas. For a premise literally dripping with self-awareness and fresh, witty opportunities for actual terror, it decides to waste its time on familiar and dull archetypal beats. Even a la Silent Hill, I found the film most intriguing as it attempted to dramatically suggest the history of the town, yet it even spoils the fun in that. I'd rather play the game, as with that other mention, or even the Blair Witch game, all of which allow for greater interactivity with stories and lore wildly more immersive and experimental than this sadly underbaked and lackluster excuse for cheap genre commentary. This might be my biggest disappointment of the year, along with Snow White.

I'll note that playing the game again may help my opinion, as I'm sure there are Easter eggs here, particularly around the protagonist's missing sister and Stormare's character, but I was too checked out to make the connections consciously or with any degree of interest.