Until Dawn has all the ingredients of a modern horror hit: a charismatic young cast, a creepy wilderness setting, and a beloved video game pedigree. Directed by David F. Sandberg, it starts promisingly, with a tense, fog-drenched prologue involving a desperate search for a missing sister, but quickly begins folding in on itself. Like a ghost story told one time too many, its power fades the longer it goes on.
The film initially taps into something primal. Clover (Ella Rubin) and her circle of friends, all wounded in quiet ways, retreat into Glore Valley, a place thick with rot and bad memories. Cinematographer Marc Laliberté gives the forest a bruised, purple-gray palette that feels genuinely unearthly, as if the woods themselves are watching. Sandberg, a master of visual mood from Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation, crafts a handful of knockout horror sequences: a tense “don’t move” standoff with a creature in the trees, a spiraling descent into an abandoned mine, flickering with ancient, half-buried warnings. In its best moments, Until Dawn hums with dread.
But atmosphere alone cannot save a story that does not know where it is going. After a strong first act, the film gets trapped in an endless loop, literally. Its time-loop conceit, meant to riff on player choice and consequence from the game, feels more tedious than terrifying. Scenes repeat with minor variations, but instead of building tension, it flattens it. What should feel like a descent into madness instead feels like narrative stalling, the horror equivalent of spinning wheels in mud.
The cast does what they can with thinly sketched characters. Rubin brings a steely vulnerability to Clover, and Michael Cimino offers flashes of genuine charm. But most of the ensemble is left stranded, defined by a single trait, the flirty one, the angry one, the skeptical one, and the film seems uninterested in deepening them beyond their initial vibes. Even the much-touted practical creature effects, impressive as they are in close-up, cannot hide the fact that the monsters are scarier in idea than execution.
It is a shame because there is a better movie hidden in the creases of Until Dawn. One that leans into its analog fear, the hush between flashlight beams, the half-heard scream in the distance, the slow realization that help is not coming. Instead, it lurches between subgenres, teen slasher, creature feature, psychological thriller, without committing to any of them. By the time the film circles back to its blood-soaked prologue, the magic has thinned. What remains is a stylish but hollow echo of better horror stories.
Until Dawn is not without its charms. Its love for the source material is obvious, and there is a palpable affection for old-school practical effects. But in trying to do everything, it ends up doing too little. Like a ghost caught between worlds, it never fully materializes.
Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
