Muddled Horror Inspired by PlayStation Video Game

The premise of Until Dawn, David F. Sandberg’s horror flick inspired by the video game of the same name, is promising despite its familiarity: A group of friends happen upon an abandoned residence in the middle of the woods and find themselves hunted by fatal forces of both the physical and supernatural variety. The stakes of this feature are also expectedly high: To avoid death, this crew of recognizable archetypes must outmaneuver their adversaries. And there’s even a twist that fans of the PlayStation game will immediately clock. This should be a recipe for success, if a minor one, but Until Dawn doesn’t really capitalize on these elements and, as a result, is erratically frightening and vaguely dissatisfying.

Written by Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman (Annabelle, Salem’s Lot), Until Dawn is the latest offering in a cinematic landscape littered with game-inspired movies. Just earlier this month Warner Bros. released A Minecraft Movie, which has, in a handful of weekends, reaped more than $700 million globally. And while Until Dawn doesn’t have the same cultural popularity as the Swedish world-building game, it does have a dedicated fan base who were converted by the original game, which included voice work from Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek.

Butler and Dauberman retain the haunted mood of the survival game, which was released in 2015. But instead of tailoring the existing backstory for screen audiences, they conjure up an entirely new one premised on five friends, played by a charming set of newcomers, on a “healing” road trip through the countryside. Until Dawn still experiments with the psychological elements of fear — a big part of the original game — but in the wake of films like Smile, the conclusions feel more safe than scary. 

It’s been a year since Clover (Ella Rubin) suffered the dual loss of her mother, who passed away, and her sister, Melanie (Maia Mitchell), who disappeared soon after their mother died. In a misguided attempt to help her move through grief, Clover’s friends decide to take a trip retracing Melanie’s final steps. When we meet these characters, they have stopped at a rural gas station for snacks and a seance. The group includes Clover’s chronically worried ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino); their occult-obsessed pal Megan (Ji-young Yoo, excellent); emotionally avoidant Nina (Odessa A’zion); and Nina’s new boyfriend Abe (Belmont Cameli), who can’t let a moment pass without telling people that he majored in psychology.

Early scenes efficiently outline the interpersonal dynamics of the gang and build some emotional investment in their friendship. These young adults are all a little messed up, but their relationships with each other keep them anchored. That’s why they are traversing the middle of nowhere with Clover, who’s been despondent and, we gather, psychologically fragile since last year. 

The action kicks off when the crew pulls up to an abandoned visitor center in Glore Valley, a fictional locale not far from the gas station. They find chilling clues during their brief snooping: Abe comes across a billboard filled with photos of missing people, including Melanie; Nina discovers a visitor log with the names of those individuals, written multiple times in increasingly scraggly script; Megan gets a bad vibe from the place, as if the spirits are trying to tell her something; and Clover swears she hears Melanie calling her from the strangely foggy wooded area.

Sandberg effectively calibrates the silences in these moments — letting entire sequences play out with little sound expect a creaking floorboard, a heavy breath or the turn of the page — to ratchet up the tension. When the slasher eventually appears, stealing the group’s car before murdering them with a humorous bluntness, there is also a real atmosphere of dread.

But the best parts of Until Dawn are merely blips in a film whose entire schtick gets stale fast. After the mysterious slasher, in the style of Michael Myers, kills Clover, Max, Megan, Nina and Abe, all five of them come back to life. They realize they are in a twisted game in which they are revived after dying, forced to relive the evening. The only way to escape is to survive through the night and stay alive until sunrise. With this knowledge, the friends set off to investigate this place and the strange psychologist (Peter Stormare) behind it all. 

Each night presents a new way of dying (stabbings, exploding limbs, axes to the head), as Sandberg borrows from slasher movies, psychological horror, monster flicks and more. While the attempt at genre homage is admirable, Until Dawn seems trapped by the tonal demands of these shifts. Sometimes the film is funny and other times it seems to aim for seriousness, leading to a confusing everything-but-the-kitchen-sink result.

Most of Sandberg’s film ends up going through the perfunctory motions of classic horror, piquing interest occasionally with a progression of impressive kills and a sharp use of practical effects. Jennifer Spence’s ace production design imbues this abandoned mine town with an appropriate spookiness and, working with cinematographer Maxime Alexandre, Sandberg stages some effectively nightmarish scenes. But even those can’t cover for the gaping plot holes and uneven performances that inspire more confusion about the movie’s intended impact. 

The closer these young adults get to figuring out the mystery behind their time-looped captivity, the more Until Dawn relies on visual shortcuts — at one point a character realizes they have been trapped for 13 nights even though audiences only experience four or five nights of death — to wrap things up and leans into pat pop psychology to plump itself with meaning. How fascinating that a part of the marketing for this muddled film involved viewers repeatedly watching it for 12 hours in hopes of winning a cash prize. It’s difficult to imagine a universe in which that experience would feel worth it.