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]
theory of a daskeman 