Until Dawn (Netflix) 2025

Full admission: I have never played the game so I cannot comment on how true it is to the source material. What I can comment on was how much I enjoyed this movie despite hearing only negative things about it. Until Dawn tries to straddle that genre line between horror and comedy that was so masterfully done by Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. 

We follow a group of friends, Clover, her ex-boyfriend Max, her pals Nina and Megan, and Nina's boyfriend, Abe. They are retracing the footsteps of Clover’s sister Melanie who had gone missing. They take shelter from a freak storm at a visitor centre in Glore Valley, an old mining town that fell victim to an earthquake in the past and is now a nature reserve. 

While waiting out the storm, they find a notice board with the faces of various missing people and a guest book with their names, including Melanie. And that’s when strange things start to happen. The storm takes on a life of its own to prevent them from leaving, a giant beast stalks the forest outside the visitor compound, weird noises, voices, and a mysterious hour glass that flips on its own starting a countdown. 

 At first the group is killed off by a masked psycho only for them to awaken again in front of the guest book, now containing their names. And so a cycle repeats as each night ends with the group dying to a new threat and repeating the night over and over again facing a multitude of horrors from a witch to ravenous humanoids, to exploding water. And each cycle drives them closer to insane desperation. All this while, a sinister presence observes their time loops and the group of friends realise they are slowly undergoing a gruesome transformation. 

 For the most part Until Dawn succeeds in finding that Evil Dead style balance between horror and hilarity, gruesome and goofy. Other clear influences include elements of Silent Hill, seen in how the Glore Valley town suffered a tragedy in the past leading to supernatural occurrences, and Scream. 

The actors do a decent enough job with their characters but half the time it almost leans into parody with how genre savvy the characters are about horror tropes and how they even lampshade those in dialogue. 

That being said, that tonal dissonance works. Director David F Sandberg combines his penchant for good horror (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) with his ability to direct an ensemble casts with genuine humor (Shazam) without coming across as cringe. 

 Despite a small budget, the movie looks impressive. The monster effects are awesome, mostly practical costumes and makeup with some CGI visual effect enhancements. The supernatural occurrences were really interesting especially the wonky rain circle. I could never tell that the movie had a budget of only 15 million dollars. That is lower than the budgets for Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne. 

 My only quibble with Until Dawn is that I would have preferred seeing more time loops. After the first couple of time loops, the rest are shown in a montage. It is an effective montage that leads to a startling revelation but still it might have been more effective to experience each night together with the protagonists. 

 All in all I enjoyed Until Dawn and wish I had seen it on the big screen. Nonetheless, thanks Netflix for hosting it so I finally get a chance to watch it. The shocks are effective, the scares are genuine, the performances are earnest and the laughs, whether intentional or not, still land. Highly recommended.