A group of friends find themselves trapped in a nightmarish time loop
when they enter a remote valley in search of a missing girl.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: David F. Sandberg
Starring: Peter Stormare, Odessa A'zion, Maia Mitchell, Michael Cimino, Ella Rubin,
Belmont Cameli, Ji-young Yoo, Willem van der Vegt
With audiences flocking to big screen adaptations of Sonic the Hedgehog,
Super Mario Bros and Minecraft, it seems movies based on video games are
finally having their moment. But just as few comic book movies actually
resemble comics, video game movies generally have little in common with
video games beyond transferring over characters and basic plot elements.
The films that play most like video games are time loop movies like Edge of Tomorrow and Happy Death Day, in which the protagonists repeatedly die
and respawn, just like they were trapped in a real life video game.
The 2015 horror game Until Dawn has now been adapted as a time loop
thriller, so it does at least capture the basic essence of video gameplay.
Unfortunately, it does nothing remotely interesting with this setup, and
it's very much a poor cousin of the two movies I just mentioned.
Diverging from the plot of the original game (which was written by indie
horror stalwart Larry Fessenden), director David F. Sandberg's adaptation
is a basic spam in a cabin thriller with time loop trimmings. Seeking
answers to her sister's disappearance, Clover (Anne Hathaway lookalike
Ella Rubin) heads to the remote valley where she believes her sibling
vanished. Clover is accompanied by her still smitten ex Max (Michael
Cimino; not that one etc), her psychic buddy Megan (Ji-young Yoo), the
sassy Nina (Odessa A'zion) and the latter's new boyfriend Abel (Belmont
Cameli).
After the obligatory encounter with a creepy gas station attendant (Peter
Stormare, returning from the game), this b-grade Mystery Inc gang find
themselves in a storm, until they arrive at a boarding house that seems to
exist outside the regular weather system (the surrounding wall of rain is
about as visually interesting as the movie ever gets). Inside they find a
guest book that has been signed a rather ominous 13 times by previous
guests, including Clover's sister, and a wall of missing persons flyers. Just as the friends are trying to make
sense of it all they're attacked and killed one by one by a masked killer,
only to immediately wake up, or respawn.
And from there on it's live, die, repeat, as Clover and her buddies keep
getting massacred before they can figure out how to escape their
predicament. The fun of Groundhog Day and its most successful clones comes
from watching characters negotiate the same set of obstacles in a subtly
different manner each time. But this can become highly repetitive if it's
not handled well, as is the case here. There isn't enough variation in the
each of the "lives" presented here, and unlike the resourceful protagonists played by
Tom Cruise and Jessica Rothe in Edge of Tomorrow and Happy Death Day,
Clover and co. don't make any gradual progress, instead figuring it out
only when they reach their last chance. What we're left with is a bunch of
idiots repeatedly being killed in uninspired ways.
If you're not engaged with a movie it can often feel like you're watching
someone else play a video game. The characters in Until Dawn are so dumb
that watching this movie is like watching a video game being played by
someone who is terrible at playing video games. With the likes of Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation (one of the better instalments of the extended
Conjuring universe), Sandberg has proven himself a capable horror
filmmaker, which makes it all the more disappointing that Until Dawn is so
lifeless and devoid of thrills. The script by Gary Dauberman and Blair
Butler constantly leaves us watching five morons babbling about how to survive
their situation until they're later joined by another figure who exists to
explain the plot to the viewer. In the film's low point, the bulk of the 13 "lives" are lazily summarised by the five friends watching a series of short clips they somehow filmed amid all this chaos. We're left wondering why Fessenden wasn't
rehired for this adaptation, but genre fans can at least take consolation in the knowledge
that he'll likely fund his next indie horror with the royalties he
receives from this mainstream misfire.
Until Dawn is in UK/ROI cinemas
from April 25th.
