Until Dawn Review: A Passing Video Game Adaptation

More than other video game studios, PlayStation has been looking to expand into movies, adapting some of its key IP into TV series and film. Their attempts have been mixed to successful with series like The Last of Us receiving critical praise, while their adaptation of Uncharted, although financially successful, didn’t hit the mark with many fans and critics. 

And while I’d like to say Until Dawn is just as great as The Last of Us, I unfortunately cannot. The film isn’t bad, but it isn’t very good either. I enjoyed my time with it, and I think horror fans will too. But there is a potential here that I feel wasn’t lived up to. This review of Until Dawn will be spoiler-free. 

Until Dawn is in theaters now.

See Also: Sinners Review: Temptation at Its Finest

Story – Deja Vu

Anyone who has played the Until Dawn game will tell you that the Until Dawn film is completely different. Here, we follow a group of adults who are searching for their friend, and sister of Clover, Melanie. While retracing her steps, they stumble upon a strange area with a visitor center. As night falls, they get stuck in a time loop where each night, a different entity tries to kill them. If they want to get out, they have to survive Until Dawn. 

There seems to always be some weird person at the gas station telling you not to do something

So, this is nothing like the game, of course. And that’s okay! I don’t think it has to be. I wanted a new but maybe similar experience here. For the most part, the story works. Watching these characters make stupid decisions and get themselves killed was fun to watch. Ultimately, though, this didn’t translate to a great ending. The characters have to survive 13 nights, but we don’t actually see a lot of that. There are so many scary monsters as well as scary scenarios but a good chunk of this is just montaged. I was so bummed to see that this was being skipped. I also didn’t like the ending and how everything was resolved. 

Characters and Performances – One Note

The ending primarily falls flat due to the characters. They never evolve in any way. Clover (Ella Rubin) is the only character who has some form of arc in her character. The rest of them don’t and it sucks because they were all sort of set up with a defect that I assumed they’d work through. They don’t. Abe (Belmont Cameli) recently joined this group, so he isn’t nearly as attached to anyone there except for his girlfriend, Nina (Odessa A’zion). Megan (Ji-young Yoo) was probably the most interesting out of the group. She has spiritual sensibilities and was often able to feel when something ominous was coming or sense the presence of something dark. She was sadly wasted and I felt got the short end of the stick compared to everyone else.

Characters say things or perform actions that should cause a rift between each other. But it doesn’t happen. Characters just move on and never address the issues between them, or they’ll address the issue but never resolve it. That also translates to the story because the way things resolved was…dull. You don’t feel as though these characters are learning anything.

You’ll get used to seeing them die

Acting-wise, I didn’t really have any fault with these characters. I think they all played and fit into their respective roles rather well. No one won me over with how great they were, but no one stood out with how poorly they delivered their lines either. I felt as though some moments could have been more emotional, but they seemed to play the safer route of avoiding these more demanding scenes.

Pacing and Editing – Abrupt Stop

As I mentioned earlier, I thought the pacing worked very well at first. We get introduced to these characters, learn a bit about them, and then they get thrown into a spooky house. The nights didn’t progress with haste, though. At first, the characters have no idea what’s going on, so they play around with that and learn, but it’s done in an incredibly fun (and gory) way. What happens after is that the pacing unexpectedly hits a brick wall while we’re going at 60 mph. I’m assuming this was done for the sake of time. Maybe the studio didn’t want the film to be over a certain length. I’m not sure, but this severely hindered the film. The time in the film skips dramatically, and we’re left with the characters that never really evolved throughout the film. There are still some scares, but nothing else.

One of the many things chasing the characters

Until Dawn has a lot of jump scares. And maybe that will bother some people, but I enjoy them when they’re done right. David F Sandberg’s previous experience with horror pays off here in crafting some frightening moments. He knows how to edit scenes so that the scares are unexpected. There was one later at the end of the film where he had you focus on one thing and then scared you with something else entirely. I do wish there was a bit more tension in the film. We should be terrified going through the house, never knowing what might be around the corner. But we never end up being afraid of the unknown.

Cinematography and Sound – Forgotten Town

Another aspect of Until Dawn that I think worked well was the cinematography. Most of the time, the characters are in this visitor center. Although we never really fear going through the house, I did enjoy looking at it and everything else outside of it. Not only do the foes change each night, but so does the environment. The area they’re in only has a visitor’s center, but over time, the outside of the house grows larger. It sort of turned into this mini Halloween town, which I thought was cool. Certain shots were beautiful and even made me want to go there! 

The outside area is just as scary

As for the audio, I enjoyed that there are some nods to the video game sound effects. For example, there was a scene where someone took down a poster, and it made a sfx similar to the one that plays in Until Dawn whenever someone finds a clue. The director has experience with when to set up a scare, and the audio helped tremendously with that. Knowing when to omit the use of it, or when to speed it up when a tense and thrilling moment was occurring, was something that was easily woven into the film. 

Are you planning to see this movie? Have you already seen it? Do you agree with this review for Until Dawn? Let us know!