Until Dawn – Movie Reviews by Ry!

Until Dawn – A Horror Loop of Death … Will I See Morning?

In a world of endless possibilities, adaptations provide a way of seeing new things in familiar settings.  No matter the genre, it is a manner of building a sandbox of opportunities.  For video game adaptations, it becomes an extra push of transference.  From two visually creative media, it becomes a twist of building an interaction through a path of escape.  In this review, I look at the latest video game/horror adaptation to hit the big screen.  Starting from a simple premise, we head down a path of familiarity with slight twists.  Even with typical horror elements, Until Dawn is a gory spin of … how do we survive till the morning? 

When a group of friends get trapped in a horrific situation, they will face death at every turn, hoping to survive till morning.  When it comes to video game adaptations, it becomes a manner of bridging the essence of the IP to visual storytelling.  Even if ‘eyes’ stare at a screen, the way to proceed becomes an indifference of circumstance.  With this latest adaptation, it provides a simple jumping off point, but never fully realizes the potential of its own path.  In the beginning, we come into this world through an ominous horror prologue.  From here, we move into the present where we are introduced to Clover (Ella Rubin), a young woman who is on a road trip with her friends.  Through methodical directions (and convenient dialogue), we get an explanation of why this group has embarked on this specific adventure: Clover’s sister has been missing for over a year, and they are retracing her last steps in hopes of finding some proof of what happened.  Eventually, through predictable sequences of cheesy dialogue and ominous foreshadowing, they retrace her steps back to an abandoned welcome center in the woods.  It is here that strange things begin to happen, leading to an unvexing discovery that they are trapped in a murderous time loop of horror.  As the group starts to understand the situation, they conclude that they must somehow survive till morning, or they will be stuck in this ‘house of horrors’ forever.  From here, the film never deviates from this simple premise, thrusting our ‘characters’ into moments of familiar horror tropes compounded in the time loop plot device.  Even with your typical jump scares and gory encounters, what keeps you glued is the retrospective nature of the genre.  For all its predictability, it is the ominous encounters of vile through irony that create the allure of mystery (in the first half).  From site gags to character folly, it is that ‘what will happen next’ mantra that pulls you into the situation.  As you watch Clover try to piece together everything in the moment, it elevates that survival motif, creating a place of story potential … that starts to sputter in the second half.

As each repeated death like sequence happens, it leads the group into a tailspin of tragic occurrences.  Each situation, no matter what is horrific, becomes a connecting web of convenience.  As Clover starts to piece together the reasons for this place existence, the ‘shock’ of the first half is drowned out by a force fed of heavy exposition and plot fodder.  The second half is a piece meal of a shallow script, a saturation caught up in the overflow of forced reasons and obvious connections.  Even with this, Clover is left with the raw choice of survivability and truth.  This crossroads leads to a third act of convenient plot devices and ‘last second’ saves, building to a lackluster climax and epilogue.  Until Dawn is a film that doesn’t change the genre, but provides a fun spin of familiar things.  If you are a fan of horror or the video game property, there is fun to be had.  For everyone else, it can be a good time at the theaters, for the right price.

Full Score – 3 out of 5 (Theater Discount)