or, “Buying-In to the Confusion”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.
3 out of 5
While my wife would call me a “gamer”, I don’t clock nearly as many hours as when I was a kid: life gets in the way. So when I do play, it’s almost exclusively ‘arcade-style’ games that I can disconnect from quickly – physically & mentally – and there must be a Pause button.
Though I can’t attest, “Until Dawn” seems regarded as one of the premier, Western-made, story-driven video games of the previous console generation: a group of disposable teens trying to survive a throng of wendigos, with a branching narrative based on player interaction. “Until Dawn: The Movie” swaps out the choose-your-own-adventure input for a “Groundhog Day” esque time-loop, with some other surprises meant to mimic the discovery a player would get from the game.
My surprise was palpable. Though lacking the original’s star-power (which featured Rami Malek & Hayden Panettiere), the movie’s twenty-something players do a convincing job and, tonically, all five are spotlighted equally throughout the script. The savagery is effective, including a show-stopping water tower sequence & a close-up of a crushed face that gave me “Irréversible” flashbacks. The dialogue isn’t bad either, often breaking the fourth-wall to cheekily address the core plot’s uninspiredness, or the suicidal inclinations of its protagonists to reset the loop & try again.
[cont’d]
The moments that worked the best, then, were the surreal touches: Peter Stormare in the prologue; the dome; the water tower. By that point, I was a happy viewer, and had bought-in to the confusion these moments elicited, as well as the established conditions to survive the night, without expecting any third-act clarification.
But while Stormare’s cadence is his best quality, his eye-winking inflections can’t hide the unnecessary exposition dump contained in the film’s finale, despite how successful Until Dawn had been up to that point cluing the audience in to its consistencies (like the water). It’s also worth noting that the manifestations are mansplained, but not the witchcraft involved in Stormare’s endgame.
It might be longer than it needs to be (scene transitions could have been sharpened, and there’s more unruly running around in the dark in the last fifteen than the whole of Uwe Boll’s “Tunnel Rats”), its costume design too H&M, and its plot too bizarre for disengaged viewers. But great visual effects & sound, committed acting, and a generous self-awareness make the Until Dawn movie an above-average spook.
//wd 4.30.2025
Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Have you played the game? Are you a fan? Can you pause it at any time? Leave us a comment below!
theory of a daskeman 