Movie Review: ‘Until Dawn’ | Moviefone

‘Until Dawn’ receives 5.5 out of 10 stars.

Opening in theaters April 25 is ‘Until Dawn,’ directed by David F. Sandberg and starring Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, and Peter Stormare.

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Initial Thoughts

As far as generic horror entries go, ‘Until Dawn’ is…all right. Directed by David F. Sandberg (who helmed the horror outings ‘Lights Out’ and ‘Annabelle: Creation’ before going down the superhero rabbit hole with two ‘Shazam!’ films) and written by Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman (the latter having penned all three ‘Annabelle’ films and the recent adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot,’ which he also directed), the movie is based on a 2015 survival horror game released for PlayStation. Except that – in the time-honored tradition of how Hollywood has treated most video games – the game’s story has been thrown out entirely in favor of an all-original tale loosely set in the game’s world.

Gamers may (rightly) complain about the disrespect (although it didn’t much hurt ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ did it?), but this version of ‘Until Dawn’ still has to succeed as a horror movie. It’s entertaining in a superficial way — and repetitive in the way that games can be — but it ultimately succumbs to its own thin nature and the lack of real stakes. While the game took inspiration from slasher movies and some other horror classics, the movie goes all-out in its homages to the genre to the point of distraction. What Sandberg and Dauberman, who certainly know their genre, might have intended as a celebration of horror ends up being a warmed-over pastiche.

Story and Direction

It’s been a year since Clover’s (Ella Rubin) sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell) took off for parts unknown following the death of their mother, and now Clover is convinced that something is amiss. Along with four friends – ex Max (Michael Cimino), bestie Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and lovers Nina (Odessa A’zion) and Abe (Belmont Cameli) – she tracks her sibling as far as a remote area named Glore Valley, where it turns out that there have been a number of strange disappearances.

And that’s the least of it. The gang of five drive through pouring rain into the valley, only to emerge at the area’s Welcome Center – with the rain still cascading around the little patch of dry land that the center sits on. Plus this has to be the most inhospitable welcome center of all time, as Clover and the others are soon stalked and brutally dispatched once night falls by a masked figure wielding a pickaxe – only, to their surprise, to wake up again at the same point earlier in the day at which they arrived in the valley.

As this goes on, the group is viciously murdered again and again – by the slasher, by poisoned water that makes them explode, and by other gruesome and painful means – only to do it again the next day. It becomes apparent that they’re caught in some kind of time loop and can only die a certain amount of times. And each time the cycle starts anew, there are more buildings, more monsters, and more ways to get killed – with the only clue about how to escape coming from an apparition in the form of a witch: “Either survive the night or become part of it.”

As mentioned earlier, the plot of ‘Until Dawn’ the movie has little to do with the game, save for some references to a mine collapse and a handful of Easter eggs regarding the main characters of the game and the actors who voice them. Instead, the movie utilizes every horror trope it can get its claws on: a masked slasher, a witch in an old house, a buried town, evil dolls, demonic possession, flesh-eating ghouls (here called wendigos, another nod to the game, although they’re not like any wendigo we’ve ever read about), and even a giant monster stomping around the woods (more like the wendigo we know).

Equally comprehensive is the list of movies that ‘Until Dawn’ pulls from: ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,’ ‘Friday the 13th,’ the first two ‘Evil Dead’ movies, ‘Poltergeist,’ ‘The Descent,’ ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ ‘My Bloody Valentine’…the references go on and on. Eventually it all gets explained (by Peter Stormare, playing a version of the character he voiced in the game), although the reason why all this is happening seems somewhat vague and underwhelming after 90 minutes of watching the kids get mutilated, mangled, and mauled in every way possible.

The gore effects, to be sure, are vivid and plentiful, a nice throwback to the hard-R rated cinematic abattoirs of the 1970s and ’80s. They’re fun to watch in the moment, channeling fleeting sensations of the giddy vibe that accompanied watching such outrageous effects decades ago. But the film can’t really rise above the nostalgia it invokes: an attempt to suggest that the ghastly events occurring in Glore Valley are a manifestation of Clover’s fear and grief rings hollow, since why would she manifest those as flesh-eating monsters?

Sandberg does wring some nicely atmospheric moments out of the premise early in the film, but once we get past the initial revelation of the time loop, the script just goes in circles itself, the crew adding a little more knowledge to their skimpy arsenal every time they respawn…kind of like a video game.

Cast and Performances 

Not much to work with here, really. This is sort of a classic ensemble of fairly unmemorable teens/twenty-somethings who are held back by flatly drawn characters and in some cases, their own relative lack of experience. The actor who probably comes off the best is Odessa A’zion, who was stuck in another woeful horror retread a few years back (Hulu’s ‘Hellraiser’), but can muster up some presence, charm, and inner strength (see her performance in the excellent ‘Fresh Kills’), earning her the most cheer-worthy moments.

No one here is bad, and the cast shows considerable commitment to the often physically demanding story, with all them dragged, beaten, stabbed, blown up, violently poisoned, and generally roughed up throughout the movie. But lead Ella Rubin doesn’t do much in particular to distinguish herself from plenty of similar characters, and the male leads are handsome but bland. The only other actor in the movie is, of course, the always offbeat Stormare, who can do this kind of thing in his sleep and makes a meal out of saying the name “Clover.”

Final Thoughts

‘Until Dawn’ is slickly made, with some nice production design elements and a few spooky moments. Aficionados of the games may be very disappointed with the lack of real connection to the source material. When they’re on their game (no pun intended), both Sandberg and Dauberman can bring the horror goods (the former’s ‘Lights Out’ and the latter’s ‘Annabelle Comes Home’ are both underrated). There’s no question that ‘Until Dawn’ is programmed to be a crowd-pleaser – the film keeps piling on the effects and gore with increasing intensity.

However, it’s all in the service of characters and a story that are not so much flimsy as just a string of sequences meant to unearth memories of other, better movies. Genre fans might have fun picking out all the references even as they get tired of the circular narrative beats, but it only exacerbates the perception that the filmmakers have no original ideas of their own, or even interesting takes on the genre tropes they’re supposedly celebrating. If you can survive that to the end credits – never mind dawn – you might enjoy yourself.