A college student and her friends find themselves in a deadly time loop trying to survive …Until Dawn in the video game adaptation directed by David F. Sandberg.
Clover is looking for her missing sister. The hunt has led her and four friends to an abandoned building in the woods. Strange things happen, and they all die.
Clover is looking for her missing sister. The hunt has led her and four friends to an abandoned building in the woods. Strange things happen. They all die.
Clover is looking for her missing sister. The hunt has led her and four friends to an abandoned building in the woods. Strange things happen. They all die.
What just happened? A time loop! Until Dawn, based upon the video game series, mixes the cabin in the woods subgenre with a time loop for uneven results, faltering in delivering on its premise, with a generic execution dulling the edges of the concept.
I haven’t played the game. I can see how the elements transfer. There’s a gametic overall story and a dig into lore I would love to explore. I know it uses the meta-context of replaying the setup for new results for the concept of game play. Clever, thanks in part to horror maestro Larry Fessenden co-writing the games, using his vast knowledge of he genre to trust and turn it. I know Peter Stormare is in games as Doctor Hill (Weeeeesssttt….), making an interconnection between the game and the movie. Otherwise, I can’t speak to fidelity; just what’s on film.
The set-up is familiar for those who love the cabin in the woods subgenre. To quote Evil Dead: The Musical: “We’re five college students on our way to an old abandoned cabin in the woods tonight!” In this case, they are searching for Clover’s missing sister, giving more of a push than the standard “just because.” However, it’s not much more than a McGuffin. A gas station meeting has a Harbinger point the way and warns simultaneously. At the building (not a cabin), it’s empty and strange. Dust-covered, 1998 on the calendar, odd missing posters on the wall, a guest book signed by the same people over and over. Let’s not forget the creepy skull-decorated hourglass on the wall, one that turns over when the sun goes down.
The sun goes down, and the monsters come out, ready to hunt down and murder the five again and again. And murder them they do. The R-rating for Until Dawn is used well for those coming for blood. Every person is murdered many times in a multitude of ways – stabs, fire, brutal beatings, eaten alive, even explosions! There is plenty of gore and some monsters, mostly rendered practically.
A time loop story is much like a video game. Characters experience an event, fail, restart with new knowledge, get a little further, fail again, work out the next steps, fail again, and come back. It’s naturally a fun premise, and it can be explored in interesting ways.
In a nice touch to start, each loop brings about new wrinkles- what we’ve seen before, plus a new building and monster or two. It seems as if each turn might be a different sub-genre, or a fun mix of a few. I was genuinely excited, wondering what would come next. Shifting parameters is a great idea, keeping characters and audience on their toes.. Imagine a version of Cabin in the Woods where we see the group touch each trigger object (merman!). We’re led to believe that Until Dawn is going to deliver on that promise.
However, it doesn’t, flattening out those wrinkles after a few rounds into repetition becoming a Cabin in the Woods Lite. What’s more, the altered playthroughs are frustratingly actually present but given in a slapdash, annoying way, leaving the repetitious bulk instead for the final third, where it all falls apart after the great set-up. The repetition becomes a bore, and the plotting and exposition become nonsense. One expects to have to make some stretches with a film and its premise, I’m not a film must make perfect logic sort, but even its whys and wherefores don’t add up, ending up comical.
Until Dark descends into the generic. I shouldn’t have been surprised, with the team behind the camera. Director David F. Sandberg makes the film look and feel as generic as possible, with little style and energy. It’s been a shame watching the style he showed in Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation be whittled away with each further film. The writers are Blair Butler, of Polaroid and the Invitation, and Gary Dauberman, of the lesser Conjuring-verse films and last year’s disappointing ‘Salem’s Lot. It doesn’t help that the production design is noticeably fake. Think of a haunted walk-through attraction. Each area of the movie looks like “this room is a hospital, this is a mine, then a Texas Chain Saw house.”
Finally, the performances range from “that’s the line reading you’re choosing? …okay” of “psychic” Yi-young Yoo to the “it’s a decent enough paycheck” of Peter Stormare. Between them, Ella Rubin wide-eyed blands through as Clover, with Michael Cimino and Belmont Cameli pushing through as best they can. Best known from the Hellraiser remake, Odessa A’zion brings the most for the main five, playing the tough, snarky girl well.
Even with limping to a close story wise, iffy production value, and bland performances, there is enough to make the film interesting for a lazy streaming viewing or a matinee. There’s a decent amount of blood and deadly damage. The idea can sustain even if it’s incomplete and hobbled.