Some of the best videogame movies, goes the conventional wisdom, are those not based on actual games at all, but those that are able to mimic the mechanics of gameplay in clever and compelling ways. What is Edge of Tomorrow if not a not-that-real-life application of respawning, trying again, and eventually achieving mastery of a difficult mission? (The truly far-fetched part is how this possibly wins the player empathy and love for a good woman in the process.) And what else is it if not vastly better than just about any game-derived movie ever made?
Until Dawn, the latest movie to be cursed with the logo of a game company out front, not only builds some of that gameplay cleverness into its structure, it also takes surprising advantage of another adaptation pitfall: A lot of great games are heavily indebted to movies, which means converting them back into movies essentially turns them into plain old knockoffs rather than interactive variations. Here, the knocking off is part of the fun, at least for a while.
The premise, for example, is pure backwoods-hillbilly set-up: Clover (Ella Rubin) has dragged her friends on a seemingly quixotic road trip attempting to track down her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell), who left town after the death of their mother but never arrived at her intended destination. Following a tip of sorts from a creepy local (Peter Stormare!), the five early twentysomethings happen upon a visitor’s center in the middle of nowhere, and realize that they’re unable to leave. They’re not pursued by a mutant family, but just about every other major horror bugaboo makes an appearance, starting with a masked slasher. When they’re all killed (and they are), the clock resets back to the previous day. It quickly becomes clear that they all must survive until dawn in order to break free and move forward – and although they seem to have more than enough respawns to learn the ropes at first, they subsequently realize that all of this dying does take its toll. They won’t have a Groundhog Day-style decade to become the best versions of themselves.
The original game is apparently a more straightforward survival-horror story, without the clock-reset factor. The film becomes a sort of horror-movie sampler; the masked killer looks a lot like Jason Voorhees, of course, and he’s followed by nasty creatures, easily-spread plagues, and, I think, some ghostly apparitions. It’s a little difficult to recall, because not all of the group’s demises are especially memorable, nevermind scary outside of their BOO! introductions – though one threat, involving a series of, ah, explosions, lingers in the memory for its gruesome comic timing.
There’s more of the latter than you might expect. One of the most surprisingly endearing aspects of Until Dawn is that its characters are allowed to be a little bit stupid. They’re akin to the fresh-faced-yet-semi-faceless ensembles that populated PG-13 (and some R-rated) horror junk throughout the 2000s, only they’re not drawn with the relentlessly phony stereotyping or hostility that often characterized the cruder entries. Instead, misinformation or bad strategy is allowed to pass through their dialogue unremarked-upon, with what could almost pass for drollery. Director David F. Sandberg, who made Lights Out and the Shazam! movies, isn’t out to torture or punish anyone, but the movie can quietly admit when they’ve said or done something foolish.
For maybe half its 103-minute running time, maybe even a little more, Until Dawn gets by on its spookhouse variety and surprising humor. Once Clover and company start to solve the puzzle at hand, though, it becomes more akin to a dull movie of a presumably exciting game – something like Silent Hill, though never quite that lugubrious. Though the threats are obviously doled out with a love of different types of horror, the characters never feel like they’re becoming genre experts; the movie never really ratchets up and ultimately doesn’t pay off. Though the game it’s based on is of a more recent and sophisticated vintage, the movie is closer to an arcade experience: You pump in some quarters and kill some time, until one or the other runs out.
Director: David F. Sandberg Writers: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler Starring: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare Release Date: April 25, 2025
Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.
