Until Dawn – Film Review

Supermassive Games’ beloved survival horror video game Until Dawn is quite literally all about making the right choice. Sure, it’s completely possible to beat the game with only one character left standing, but ideally, you want to make all of the right decisions to have the game end with everyone still alive.

One of the most cherished aspects of that game is the fact that, if you make the wrong choice, you can’t simply restart and try again. You have to accept it, and move on. All this is to say that the brand new feature film adaptation of Until Dawn sadly makes too many wrong decisions for it to be a solid video game adaptation.

In fact, there’s almost nothing about this film that feels like the game. If it wasn’t for one or two elements here, they could’ve called this something entirely different. Why didn’t they? Because they wanted to make some easy money. Why they didn’t simply choose to adapt the storyline of the game is beyond me. And why they decided to include a weird time loop element here that wasn’t present in the game whatsoever is one of the most baffling things about the film.

With a screenplay crafted by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, and with David F. Sandberg’s proven horror chops (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation), it seemed like a promising translation. However, while the film nails a handful of genre essentials — breathtaking cinematography, jaw-dropping kill sequences, and moments of genuine tension — it ultimately falls prey to a clumsy story structure, an overreliance on cheap jumpscares, and a baffling disconnection from the very mythology it seeks to expand.

Set in the same universe as the 2015 game but telling a new standalone story, Until Dawn follows Clover (Ella Rubin), still haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her sister Melanie a year earlier. In classic horror fashion, she and her friends — Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A’zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abe (Belmont Cameli) — return to the remote valley where Melanie vanished, hoping for closure. Instead, they stumble into an abandoned visitor center, and soon enough, a masked killer begins picking them off in gloriously gruesome fashion.

Then comes the twist: after dying, they wake up, trapped on the same night, facing the same terrors again and again. It’s a premise rich with potential, marrying slasher horror with Groundhog Day-style existential dread. But where this fusion could have elevated the film into something fresh and psychological, Until Dawn often treats its time loop as little more than a gimmick — resetting the board whenever it writes itself into a corner, without deeper thematic exploration. To be honest, I’m getting incredibly tired of these time loop movies. The only time loop films I want to see in the near future are Happy Death Day 3 and Freaky 2, thank you very much.

If there’s one department where Until Dawn excels without question, it’s the violence. The kill sequences here are absolutely fantastic, each one creatively staged, brutally executed, and stylishly filmed. Sandberg clearly delights in subverting expectations: just when you think you know how a death will play out, he twists the knife — sometimes literally. Whether it’s a tense chase through a moonlit forest or a suffocating showdown inside the abandoned center’s decaying halls, each kill is visceral, memorable, and disturbingly beautiful.

Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography deserves special praise. Every frame is dripping with atmosphere, from the oppressive gloom of the valley to the flickering, dying lights inside the visitor center. His work helps maintain a tangible sense of dread, even when the script struggles to do so. There’s an eeriness to the way the landscape is shot, making the environment itself feel like a looming predator.

Despite an overabundance of jumpscares — most of them telegraphed and hollow — Sandberg occasionally recaptures the genuine tension that made his earlier work so effective. Unfortunately, these genuinely nerve-wracking scenes are buried under a barrage of loud, lazy scares that feel engineered more to jolt audiences than to truly unsettle them. The ratio is skewed, and the film too often mistakes volume for fear.

Ella Rubin leads the ensemble with a strong, grounded performance. Clover feels believable — a mix of grief, guilt, and growing terror that makes her easy to root for. Michael Cimino and Odessa A’zion bring energy and charisma to their roles, though the script gives them little beyond archetypal “good guy” and “bad girl” beats to work with. Ji-young Yoo and Belmont Cameli are fine, but again, limited by writing that leans into genre clichés rather than character development.

The standout, unsurprisingly, is Peter Stormare, reprising his role from the game. His scenes — which cleverly blur the line between reality and hallucination — inject the film with a welcome dose of mystery. Yet even his performance feels somewhat squandered, as the film barely scratches the surface of the psychological horror that made his original game scenes so iconic.

One of Until Dawn’s most frustrating flaws is how disconnected it feels from the source material. Fans hoping for ties to the game’s lore will leave disappointed. Aside from Stormare’s presence and a few easter eggs, the film almost feels embarrassed of its origins, choosing to tell a generic teen slasher story instead of fully embracing the unique flavor that made the game memorable.

Making matters worse, the plot is painfully predictable. Once the time loop is revealed, the beats fall into a familiar rhythm: arguments, separations, deaths, reset. Repeat. There’s no escalation, no real evolution in how the characters confront their fate, making the repetition feel tedious rather than suspenseful. By the third cycle, viewers can likely guess who will survive longest and who’s due for a messy demise next.

Until Dawn is not an awful film, but it is an underwhelming one. In its best moments — during a brilliantly staged kill or a gorgeously framed shot of a character facing down their doom — it hints at the chilling horror epic it could have been. But it’s undone by a script that plays it too safe, a time loop mechanic it doesn’t fully commit to, and a shallow connection to the beloved world it’s meant to expand.

Fans of the game might find some enjoyment spotting familiar elements, and hardcore horror aficionados will appreciate the lovingly crafted kill sequences and sumptuous cinematography. For most, however, Until Dawn will feel like being trapped in a nightmare that’s stylish, occasionally scary, but ultimately all too easy to wake from.