Starting April 24, cinemas will be showing all sorts of horrors in the survivor’s mountain «Until Dawn», which is based on the 2015 same name video game. The movie takes place in the same universe and is a separate story that expands the mythology of the original game source. As always, read our review to find out whether this idea turned out to be a good one.
Pluses:
an attempt to build its own story, given that the original game was itself a movie; several spectacular moments (the most memorable in every sense is the explosive episode with water, as well as the found footage scene); the presence of Peter Stormare;
Minuses:
the film does not work well with typical genre tropes; none of the characters evoke a viewer's response; watching this film is like watching someone playing an uninteresting video game; some may lack connections to the original source;
«Until Dawn»
Genre horror movie
Director David F. Sandberg
Starring Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa Adlon, Ji-Yong Yu, Belmont Stones, Maya Mitchell, Peter Stormare
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
A year has passed since Clover’s sister, Melanie, mysteriously disappeared. The girl wants answers, so, with the support of her friends, she sets out on a journey along the same route as her missing relative. On the recommendation of a friendly bearded man from a roadside shop, the group ends up at an inconspicuous but seemingly nice house that even the bad weather spares.
The girls and boys decide to wait out the rainstorm in this hut, but once inside, they discover many strange things. For example, Abel stumbles upon a bizarre bulletin board with missing persons, including Melanie. And Nina looks into the guest book, which contains entries in increasingly illegible handwriting. The wall-mounted hourglass with a skull on it stands out among the dreary interior, which, as it turns out later, is there for a reason.
The situation becomes completely unbearable when the bewildered students are mowed down one by a terrifying masked bull. In the end, they all die ignominiously, but the very next moment they return to life, to the initial stage of their stay in the hellish hovel. After trying to figure out what the hell is going on here, the poor guys realize that their only way out is to somehow make it to dawn.
Since «Until Dawn» is essentially the same movie, only interactive, the very idea of bringing the game to the movie screen looks questionable. And that’s not to mention the fact that the original material was stuffed with various genre clichés. Therefore, the filmmakers seem to have taken the only right path and offered a new story with completely different characters.
However, the movie didn’t get any better.
«Until Dawn» turns out to be a completely unviable horror story. It limps with both feet on the general concept, the secondary nature of which is obvious, and local elements, where you won’t find a fresh look by daylight with a candle. The former is manifested in the use of the formula «Groundhog Day», worn out to the hilt, multiplied by the horror version «Edge of Tomorrow». The second concerns everything else — from the ineptitude of helpless dummies to the routine of screamers and «ordinariness» local dirtbags. Just another bunch of snarling zombies, you might think.
The trick is that the game’s formulaic horror component was not a problem (more of a feature than a bug, given the sources of inspiration for the developers, including classic horror films and video games). And the interactivity factor did its job: it was the player’s choice that had a decisive impact on the development of the plot and the fate of the characters. In a movie theater, the viewer is deprived of this miracle function and plays a purely contemplative role, and in fact, this process seems a bit like watching someone else cut themselves for fun. Correction — uninteresting amusement.
The story begins in the spirit of typical horror, when a group of young people find themselves in a remote cabin, where an archetypal redneck in a scary mask with a cleaver/chainsaw/hammer (emphasis added) is waiting for them. It’s clear that this is a setup, that no one here is going to seriously play a banal slasher, that we’ll probably be treated to a bright genre vibe and things will get more fun from there. However, this does not happen. An attempt to pay homage to old-school horror films and thoroughly mix up blatant cliches turns out to be dull and unsuccessful.
If in the same «Edge of Tomorrow» Tom Cruise’s character in his (of course, impossible) of the mission was constantly advancing further and further, thus eliminating any boredom and potential annoyance from repetitive actions, then each new level of «Until Dawn» is very far from this. Here we have just useless, aimless throwing, a kind of helpless fuss that mostly leads to nothing.
That is, practically all the movie offers is an hour and a half of watching characters we don’t care about being brutally dealt with (don’t count on a cameo by Rami Malek or Hayden Panettiere). The only face in the frame that the viewer might be happy to see is Peter Stormare’s unshaven marmite, who has been transported here directly from the game.
It’s still not clear who this center of secondary and creative failure is intended for. Fans of the original already have a self-sufficient variant game, and they hardly need such a second-rate ending. And the horror fans have nothing to catch, even more so — herds of feral monsters suddenly appearing from around the corner in complete darkness, an old woman witch or a big guy in a clown mask will not scare or surprise anyone today.
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