Until Dawn is a wildly popular Playstation game written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick. It utilizes Supermassive Games’ engine to craft an eerie and dangerous world, allowing gamers to choose character outcomes. This butterfly effect leads to all playable characters’ lives being in the hands of the gamer. This is also one of the titles that really got me back into gaming after stepping away for years. It understands the tropes in the movies that it nods at and gives horror fans the feeling of being in their own movie. So, when word came out that there would be a film adaptation of Until Dawn, we assumed it would be a fairly easy transfer. However, you know what they say about assuming things.
A Familiar Premise with a Time Loop Twist
The Until Dawn film follows a pretty standard premise at first. Clover (Ella Rubin) is looking for her missing sister Mel (Maia Mitchell). She and her friends are tracing Mel’s last steps through a weird small town when they find themselves in a creepy abandoned home. However, when they begin to investigate the property, they are murdered by a mask-wearing psycho. This resets them to a key part (or checkpoint for us gamers) and gives all five of them the chance to make different choices and possibly survive. This is a clever way to navigate the freedom of the original game and kill people in various ways, in different orders, etc. I love that Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman thought of that as a way to stay sort of close to the source material’s energy.
The friend group supporting Clover is filled with some familiar faces. Ji-young Yoo (Freaky Tales) as Megan, Michael Cimino (Love, Victor) as Max, Odessa A’zion (Hellraiser (2022)) as Nina, and Belmont Cameli (The Alto Knights) as Abel. Megan is a little psychic and can sense things the others cannot. Max seems to only have Clover on the brain, and we find out they used to be a couple. Nina and Abel have been together for three months. So, it is wild that he is traveling the country with her friend group as they try to help Clover get closure. While the cast is charming enough, none of them get to do anything interesting with their characters. Even their repeated deaths are not exciting.
A Series of Unfortunate Paint by Number Scares
Director David F. Sandberg finds a chuckle, some gore, and shows off some familiar creatures. However, that does not stop Until Dawn from feeling like a forgotten title held over from all of the early aughts slashers that came fast and furious. This movie has a couple of visual cues and easter eggs for the gamers. It also has the time loop device that should have helped lead to various interesting outcomes. However, at the end of the day, it is just a group of young people going through the motions. Most of the scares are very paint-by-number, meaning none of them are effective. This makes characters sacrificing themselves or doing something brave fall flat every time. It does not feel like any stakes are being raised until they believe it is their last attempt to survive the night. That is when the movie finally finds second gear for a few seconds before going back to coasting downhill.
Peter Stormare follows his character, Hill, from the game to the big screen. However, even he is wasted in this mess. By the time he is revealed to be exactly who he is, even the most diehard Until Dawn fan will be over it. When we see his familiar office, with some of the coolest easter eggs, it is way too late to care. We have already figured out the movie is not going to do anything exciting with this premise. It is too intent on getting the best outcome where all of the characters survive to ever make us feel unsafe. The runtime is also filled with bad dialogue and characters sacrificing themselves to restart rather than look for more clues. It is a frustrating affair that misses everything that made the game exciting and interesting. It also sidesteps everything that makes halfway-decent horror movies stand out in 2025.
Ultimately Until Dawn is an Uninspired Disappointment
Until Dawn feels like a movie that the game would make fun of while being meta. If it had been a solid film in its own right, I could forgive it for not living up to its IP. However, it has the energy of a Tubi movie that found extra funding. While it is not the worst survival horror video game adaptation we have gotten, it is depressingly underwhelming. Even the few cool kills feel like uninspired box-checking rather than something to make us lean in. This is sad because movies like Happy Death Day have taught us every kill can be an event, even in a time loop.
I take no joy in stating that Until Dawn feels like an uninspired and disjointed mess. It is like someone put all the right ingredients into a pot but forgot to turn the stove on and are feeding us uncooked soup. Until Dawn sadly falls into the trap of being a bad film adaptation of a great game. We have to wonder if this is fan abuse or a skill issue. All I know for sure is that we all deserved a much better product than whatever this is.