Until Dawn review – an insulting parade of tedium

The video game film adaptation has been undergoing a transformation in form in recent years. It used to be that a video game movie would simply take some of its source material’s atmosphere and iconography and toss out the rest, but lately games have been receiving more faithful pixel-to-screen conversions. Still, old ways die hard, and Until Dawn is a committed throwback. The original game is a choose-your-own-adventure slasher movie, where the choices made by the player (whether that’s an explicit decision of which path to take or success/failure to hit a timed button prompt) slightly alter the direction of the story. It’s unlikely that two players will end their play through with the same arrangement of characters having survived. The game is fun because, despite its recognizable horror elements, the element of interaction introduces a feeling of two-way conversation. It’s a game for people who shout “don’t go in there!” at the screen during horror movies – now you can decide whether they should go in there or not.

The film adaptation eschews the game’s story and most of its cast, except for Peter Stormare as the requisite creepy gas station attendant, for original material. Clover (Ella Rubin) and her CW-style friend group are searching for her missing sister a year after she vanished. Fleeing a thunderstorm, they stumble into a welcome center for a mysterious town, and when the sun sets they are all set upon and butchered by a masked maniac. When they all wake up again at the beginning of the evening, they realize that they’re trapped in a time loop, and the only way out is to survive….until dawn. Director David F. Sandberg, whose first feature was the gloriously cruel horror film Lights Out, related the time loop structure to the ability to replay the game to see different paths and outcomes. But the game Until Dawn notoriously disallows the ability to reload saves and take back mistakes. It’s a strange misapprehension of the source material’s strengths, and it’s not the only one.

Where the game got away with using familiar horror iconography by way of audience participation, losing the novelty of interaction leaves the film feeling tediously conventional. The scares couldn’t be creakier: a rocking chair swaying on its own, a ghost-possessed girl’s banshee shriek, a litany of creepy masks. Even the game’s wendigos (brought to life by its co-writer, indie horror legend Larry Fessenden) are rendered here as merely generic zombies. The film promises that every night will contain a new horror, but the lack of variety means they all feel as punishingly repetitive for the viewer as they are for the characters.

The game’s story may not have been the most unique thing in the world, but the film replaces it with a tired rip-off of The Cabin in the Woods. A pre-credits stinger (and a photo-only cameo from Rami Malek) promises a sequel that more faithfully adapts the game, but it’s too little too late. As A Minecraft Movie and The Last of Us have proven, you no longer need to abandon a game’s essence in screen adaptation. The Playstation Productions logo promises future adaptations of games like ‘Horizon’ and ‘Ghost of Tsushima’. Hopefully by the time they come around, the studio will have realized that if you build it, they will come.

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