Until Dawn Review

Yikes!

Until Dawn is like that haunted house in your quaint small town that your friends keep saying year after year that you should all go to, and finally, you all have a joint and go, and it's just the lamest fucking thing you've ever been to and wonder why you wasted your money in the first place. Imagine if Cabin in the Woods (2011) and Happy Death Day (2017) had the most boring child devoid of fun or charisma. Some decent kills do not make up for such a horrible script that's tonally a mess. Blowing the Groundhog Day concept for a movie is challenging, but here you go. This videogame adaptation that betrays the original material full-heartedly from PlayStation Studios might be the worst thing they've done since they raised video game prices to $70. If Sony wanted to give us hack stuff, they should have allowed themselves to be hacked again.

Until Dawn is about a group of friends searching for one of the members' missing sisters, which leads them to her last whereabouts in this creepy valley. The group finds this mysterious house where they are viciously murdered each night by a different monster or psycho unless they can survive until sunrise. Sure.

The primary issue with Until Dawn, besides its awful and cliche-riddled script that actors are genuinely doing their very best to squeeze out some energy from, is that it's so dull. The film can't decide for the life or lives of it what it wants to be. There is an attempt at times when it wants to be this absurd horror comedy. The best scene in the film is when the group locks themselves in a bathroom, and it turns out even the tap water is dangerous, leading to insane results. The problem is that the film sometimes wants to have its cake and eat it too, where it tries to balance the emotional toll of dying repeatedly with the campy ridiculousness of a different film. Only so many films can balance both of these, such as Cabin in the Woods, or use the Groundhog Day concept to its full effect in the modern day, like Palm Springs (2020) or Edge of Tomorrow (2014).

Some parts of Until Dawn make me wonder if there was a good movie somewhere. The water-drinking scene, for example, is just the body horror explosion I needed to get out of my seat. When one of the friends realizes they've been recording their deaths on their phone for weeks, we see creepy moments outside of the dull jump scares we are privy to during most of its runtime. The cast was distinct enough, and the dynamic of all or nothing when it came to escaping when friend group members had to kill or maim one another could have been interesting if I felt anything for their characters and were written like real people. I do love how hardcore some of the kills were if they meant anything really, and the ending of the film devolving into just like weird zombie werewolf things chasing our party around just seemed like cheap haunted house shit. For the most part, I found the film's direction lacking creativity and a bland and forgettable-looking movie.

Until Dawn is a streaming guilty pleasure for many when it hits Shudder or Netflix, but for horror fans, I can't have any recommendations outside, like a few cool kills here and there. You've seen this done so much better in other movies, and even the concept of a Groundhog's Day haunted house feels like all the fun has been sucked out of it. The purpose of the original game was to make your horror movie based on your decisions or choices. This film adaptation feels like a departure from the dark and grizzly tone of the original. The lack of creativity is evident in the film's reliance on tired horror tropes and its failure to fully explore the potential of the Groundhog Day concept. Until Dawn more like Until Yawn amiriteeee??!! Anyway.

Final Score: 3/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit