Until Dawn is a Supermassive Games production, approaching the tenth anniversary of its original release바카라a game that once stood at the intersection of cinematic horror and interactive storytelling. In the wake of adaptations such as The Last of Us (2023-present) and even the more surprising A Minecraft Movie (2025), Until Dawn attempts to resist the impulse of a faithful, frame-by-frame recreation. Instead, it seeks to reimagine the world, characters, and topography of the game through an entirely new narrative thread. The result, however, is a paradox: a film that is simultaneously derivative and disjointed, ambitious in conception but hesitant in execution.
In January 2024, Screen Gems and PlayStation Productions officially announced the development of Until Dawn바카라s live-action adaptation. With Sandberg at the helm and a screenplay penned by Gary Dauberman building upon an earlier draft by Blair Butler, the project was marketed as 바카라an R-rated love letter to the horror genre, with an ensemble cast.바카라 This live-action video game adaptation, directed by David F. Sandberg바카라best known for genre-defining works like Annabelle: Creation (2017) and Shazam! (2019)바카라has sparked controversy since its announcement. Shot against the atmospheric backdrop of Budapest, Hungary, Until Dawn arrived laden with both anticipation and trepidation.
The transmutation of player agency into cinematic passivity is no small thing. Adaptations like these are, in many ways, the quiet death of choice-based narrative storytelling. With studios always looking to leverage video game franchises with large fan bases for possible success at the box office, this practice does not look to change anytime soon. Adding the name of a franchise to a film comes with the consequences of an already established audience and a certain set of expectations. The borrowed architecture of the game becomes a hollow cathedral바카라beautiful, eerie, familiar, but stripped of what made it great. It is a bold move바카라perhaps even a necessary one in an age oversaturated with carbon-copy content바카라but one that walks a fragile line between homage and hollow innovation. Perhaps it is commerce masquerading as art, or perhaps it is art that is merely haunted by the burden of its profitability.
The original game, a 2015 PS5 release, was already rich with cinematic flair, interactivity, and a survival horror narrative that borrowed heavily from genre conventions, while simultaneously playing with them. Translating that interactivity into a film medium could have been a daunting, but potentially groundbreaking opportunity바카라one where the filmmakers could have explored alternate endings, delved into hidden lore, or enriched character backstories in ways the game format couldn바카라t allow.
The film makes a bold narrative pivot by discarding the game바카라s branching-choice butterfly effect structure and introducing a new mechanism: a Groundhog Day (1993) style time loop, where the only route to salvation is surviving the night until dawn. On paper, it바카라s a compelling conceit, a recursive cycle offering renewed stakes and evolving threats each night. But the film, regrettably, squanders this creative potential, opting instead for shallow shock value and inconsistent pacing. It fills the gaps with repeating loops, dying and resurrecting with partial grasp of previous events. This cyclical structure mirrors more of a roguelike game logic or time-loop narrative like Happy Death Day (2017). What should have been a psychological and existential unravelling thus becomes a rote catalogue of horrors, devoid of the moral tension that made the game so arresting.
The film sets off with a familiar visual tableau바카라a group of young adults journeying toward a secluded forest cabin. It바카라s hard not to feel the gravitational pull of The Cabin in the Woods (2011), both in setting and tone. This trope, though well-worn, still holds promise, especially if approached with wit, subversion, or even reverent homage. For a moment, there is hope that Until Dawn might lean into its self-awareness and deliver a genre-savvy twist, perhaps even with a meta-textual wink. But that hope, like so many characters in its lineage, dies quickly.
The film does not feature the original cast of the game, except Peter Stormare, who reprises his role as Dr. Hill바카라his presence a thin tether to the game바카라s psychological roots. The film opens exactly as the trailer of the film, with Melanie (Maia Mitchell) clawing her way out of the earth, bloodied and breathless, only to be met by a masked killer who slashes her with mechanical cruelty. It바카라s a brutal prologue that sets the tone, yet curiously, its emotional residue is left to evaporate.
Clover (Ella Rubin), Melanie바카라s younger sister, takes centre stage as the unlikely leader of a group drawn to the same remote valley where Melanie vanished a year prior. Among them are Max (Michael Cimino), her yearning ex; Nina (Odessa A바카라zion), the loyal friend; Abel (Belmont Cameli), Nina바카라s boyfriend; and Megan (Ji-young Yoo), the psychic seer whose visions feel more like narrative devices than characters. What they find is a visitor centre sealed in time바카라a calendar frozen seventeen years ago, a guest book haunted by repetition, each name inscribed thirteen times like ritualistic echoes of fate.
The premise is ripe: survive until dawn, break the loop. A night that resets with every death, governed by the steady trickle of sand in an ominous hourglass. Yet despite the promise of thirteen distinct nights, the film hastily leaps across eight of them, explaining the gaps away through fragmented phone calls, an inelegant patch over what should have been the film바카라s narrative backbone. The time loop, which could have been a complex structure of repetition and consequence, instead feels like a discarded conceit or an aimless tool of carnage.
There바카라s ambition here, certainly바카라echoes of cosmic dread, fractured time, and interpersonal grief바카라but it is buried under the film바카라s disjointed pacing and uneven commitment to its own mythology. Each reset should have offered insight, character growth, or mounting tension; instead, it begins to feel like a structural gimmick, emptying the loop of its emotional stakes. The cast works hard to anchor the chaos, but the script abandons its scaffolding too soon, opting for momentum over meaning.
Taking advantage of their confused and vulnerable state, the characters바카라 dynamic is immediately thrust into disarray, tested under the weight of newfound rules and shifting realities. Though the ensemble initially functions as archetypal fodder, there is a very subtle evolution as they grow increasingly self-aware, brushing up against the genre바카라s fourth wall. Yet, this arc, however engaging, is frequently undermined by implausible decisions and mechanical writing, their progression dictated more by plot convenience than organic evolution. The deep anguish, however, lies not in the spectres that chase them, but in the existential weight of how many lives they have left. Each loop erodes a little more of who they once were.
As they fumble through this purgatorial labyrinth, the narrative becomes a playground for elaborate character deaths바카라stylised, frequent, and creatively orchestrated. What unfolds is less a horror story than a theatrical experiment in mortality. Where the film truly falters is in its desperate search for resolution. Enter Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare), a familiar name to those who played the original game. His reintroduction initially promises cohesion, a pivot towards narrative clarity. Unlike The Curator from 바카라The Dark Pictures바카라 Anthology, Dr. Hill exists in the same world as the characters and operates as a cryptic trickster responsible for the time and death loop circumstances, yet never fully in control.
As the story ascends into abstraction, it begins to collapse under its own ambition. The final act feels frantic, bloated with chaotic spectacle, and the philosophical through-lines established earlier are buried beneath excess. Beyond Dr. Hill바카라s return and the atmospheric callbacks, the nods to Until Dawn feel more like scattered Easter eggs than an integrated homage, depending on where one stands바카라either a charming gesture or a disservice. This incessant need to divorce it from the original game and only use the franchise name as a source of inspiration바카라for aesthetics and allusions or references to the original game, without a callback to the story바카라felt less like an extension of the world and more like using the game to further a subpar story that doesn바카라t gel well as a whole on screen.
On a technical level, the film remains meritorious. Both CGI and practical effects are skillfully executed, never ostentatious but competent in rendering the eerie terrains and grotesque manifestations of this twisted world. Yet one can바카라t help but wonder: why adapt a game like Until Dawn, whose essence lies in the finality of death, only to impose a respawn mechanic foreign to its design? In many ways, the story may have been better served within the 바카라Dark Pictures바카라 universe, where repetition is baked into its very structure.
However, the film바카라s creative decisions signal a troubling disregard for the ethical craftsmanship of adaptation. The artistry of filmmaking바카라especially when dealing with established source material바카라lies not merely in replication but in respectful reinvention. Here, that respect often feels conspicuously absent.
Still, there is something seductively primal in its indulgence. When the film embraces its most chaotic instincts바카라 blood, dread, sudden violence, it momentarily compels. It does not ask for critical engagement, only surrender. In these flashes, when logic is suspended and instinct reigns, the viewer may find a brief, savage pleasure. Until Dawn knows this and leans into it, eager to offer the audience a visceral ride, even if it cannot promise a meaningful destination.
Sakshi Salil Chavan is a documentary filmmaker and an entertainment writer based in Mumbai.
