Until Dawn (2025) review

Dir. David F. Sandberg

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn is based on the popular PlayStation video game series, unplayed by me. Those familiar with the game say its connectivity to the original game’s story is practically nonexistent, which honestly makes sense. Until Dawn was less a game and more of an interactive, 10-hour movie, with built-in replay value given that paths could be altered and characters could be spared a bloody fate based on the player’s choices. There’s a reason games of this ilk rarely make it to the big screen. I’m old enough to remember all the rumors regarding a Heavy Rain film adaptation before it languished a long, slow death in development hell.

Gary Dauberman (The Nun) and Blair Butler’s (Fresh Ink) script keeps the series’ framework the same, as a group of teenagers head to a secluded lodge where they are viciously attacked by a gambit of supernatural monsters. Ella Rubin is Clover, who is searching for her sister, who went missing over a year ago. For some reason, she’s waited this long to retrace her steps, and along for the hunt are her many friends, including: her ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino); an alleged psychic in Megan (Ji-young Yoo); her close friend Nina (Odessa A’zion); and Nina’s prick boyfriend Abel (Belmont Cameli).

A blinding, torrential downpour down a winding road eventually leads them to a creaky old home that is on the other side of the storm. Inside the house are a plethora of missing persons flyers and clock with a large hourglass on its face. Their search of the house leads them to being brutally murdered by a guy in a clown mask. Once all are dead, the characters respawn at the estate, only they’re not doomed to the same fate. Each night at this house plays out completely different. One night, their end comes due to parasitic worms. Another night, poisoned water makes them explode. It’s almost like a series of vignettes with a Cabin in the Woods flare.

Until Dawn was directed by David F. Sandberg, who, after being at the helm for both Shazam! movies, has pivoted back to the horror genre, where he got his major filmmaking start. Sandberg’s debut, Lights Out, was a buzzy little chiller that was lukewarm on atmosphere, while his second feature, Anabelle: Creation, was more of the same from the milquetoast Conjuring spinoff series. That said, Sandberg’s acumen with the horror genre positions him nicely for something like Until Dawn, which often plays like a highlight reel of supernatural happenings, most of which amusing.

Where the film falters is that Dauberman and Butler don’t seem to have any ambition in making this funhouse of horrors anything beyond momentary entertainment. Its connectivity to its source material is having Peter Stormare reprise his role from the video game. He’s a sinister psychologist, whose purpose is confusingly articulated, and the longer the teens spend searching the house with flashlights and finding new creatures that go bump in the night, the less sense the overall package makes.

This renders Until Dawn exciting on a surface-level. The redundancy creeps in a little after the hour-mark, when the characters suggest that their subconscious is what plays into the real-life nightmares they’re reliving every evening. It’s not concretized to where it actually serves as a reasonable justification, so what you’re left with is a film that gets by on being unpredictable, if unsubstantial.

While most of the characters might be more likable and nimble than most groups of faceless teenagers, they truly don’t often have anything meaningful to say. This is a horror film where exclamations like “oh shit” and “shit, what was that?” serve as the primary dialog. It takes on parody levels at times, spared by the fact that the film doesn’t take itself too seriously. Michael Cimino flirts with breaking the third wall at times to remind his pals what they should/shouldn’t do in horror movie settings, which doubles down on the breezy tone this picture cultivates early.

It would’ve been refreshing and perhaps unexpected if Until Dawn strived to be more than just a series of jolts and silly creatures, but when compared to the larger pantheon of film adaptations of video games, it still exists in the coveted echelon of being “decent,” if unmemorable.

Starring: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Zsófia Temesvári, and Peter Stormare. Directed by: David F. Sandberg.