O Death

A lost in translation adaption (Spoilers)

Until Dawn is a loose adaptation of the interactive video game of the same name. The way the game works is that if you do this thing in Level 1, then that thing will happen in Level 3, which will then kill you. How do you translate that into a movie? One way is to make an interactive film like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (NSFW). However, writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler instead go with Option B, which is to make a time warp movie.

The plot of the film follows Clover (Ella Rubin), who is searching for her missing sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell). Together with her friends, she ventures to this cabin in the middle of nowhere, where they get stuck in a time loop. Every night, they’re attacked by a whole host of monsters, and the only way to break the loop is to survive until dawn.

At first, I was disappointed that the filmmakers weren’t making a 1:1 adaptation of the game. However, the film is true to the spirit of the game, which combines many different tropes and switches genres. It goes from a slasher/torture porn film to a creature feature. And Happy Death Day meets The Cabin in the Woods is a pretty sweet hook. Here’s where the movie goes wrong.

The characters in the video game version consist of your usual band of horror movie stereotypes. However, something that the game and The Cabin in the Woods do really well is add nuances to the different archetypes (NSFW). For instance, in the video game version of Until Dawn, the guy who starts as the biggest a*****e ends up becoming the male hero. The film version of Until Dawn does not have the same rich characters. As is often the case with movies written by Dauberman.

Positives and Negatives (but mostly Negatives)

Clover has a lot of mental health problems. Her whole life fell into this rut after her mom died, and she suffers from anxiety and suicidal tendencies. All of which should have been shown or worked into the dialogue better. This becomes a problem at the very end of the movie, where it’s revealed that Clover’s mental health struggles have affected the whole film.

Dr. Alan Hill (Peter Stormare, the only actor to reprise his role from the game) says that all the monsters represent her issues. For instance, the water that causes spontaneous combustion symbolizes her self-destructive tendencies. That falls rather flat, given how many of her problems are talked about instead of shown, especially in this day and age, where every other horror movie is a metaphor about mental health.

The movie also doesn’t utilize its time warp premise that well, either. The characters don’t utilize what they learn to turn the tables on the villains as much as they could have. Clover uses the exploding water to take down Hill, revealed to be behind everything, even though he only appears sinister and evil in the game. Except, there’s nothing to the extent of Tree (Jessica Rothe) using everything she’s learned at the climax of Happy Death Day.

All in all, this movie is not unwatchable. It was directed by David F. Sandberg, who’s great at building suspense. However, it’s probably a good thing that I haven’t played the game in a while, which I recommend doing. If you’re not a gamer or don’t own the proper console, you could always watch a cutscene movie of the game. Here’s one where everybody survives (NSFW), which is a fun but difficult achievement to unlock.