Until Dawn review: an incoherent disaster

“Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.“

I’m supposed to be writing a review for Until Dawn. I will write a review for whatever I just watched, but I’m not sure it was Until Dawn. Maybe I walked into the wrong theater by accident? Perhaps the stress of life has finally broken me, causing me to hallucinate an entire hellishly boring movie that starred the guy from Love, Victor? In any event, here’s my review for the film I’m (not so) sure is Until Dawn.

For those who have played the game, here’s the plot because I have questions, comments, and concerns. In the film, a girl named Melanie (Maia Mitchell) goes missing. A year later, her sister Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A’zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abel (Belmont Cameli) decide to visit the spot where she went missing to find closure. They drive into a mystical valley where they get stuck in a time loop and battle monsters, supernatural entities, killers, and Wendigos. They’re killed every single night, restarting the dreaded evening over and over again.

It turns out that the entire thing is actually a study being conducted by a psychologist in a town that sank into the Earth after a mining disaster, and he’s somehow controlling all the supernatural stuff … and the water makes you explode … and it’s all happening thanks to the mental trauma of Clover. It’s not a Fight Club deal where it’s all in Clover’s head, but more like her mental pain is somehow powering the evil forces that the doctor is using to make the, um, experiment happen. I mentioned the water makes you explode, right?

So, gamers around the world, help me out here. Do I suffer from amnesia? Did a brain aneurysm pop? Am I completely misremembering the game Until Dawn? Because this is nothing like the game I remember playing. It has new characters, a new setting, a new story, and new gimmicks that unfortunately don’t work. Oh, but they throw in an Easter egg that implies the film is a prequel to the game, which is a mess that requires its own scathing article.

Until Dawn starts out pretty strong

The worst part of Until Dawn is that I liked the beginning, and it gave me false hope. When the film finally gets going, we see the group in a secluded house in the forest with a giant hourglass on the wall that has somehow flipped over, revealing that a timer has started counting down. They’re all killed by a masked murderer and then suddenly find themselves restarting the evening with the hourglass refilled. But they all still have their memories of the previous night, and instead of being a true Groundhog Day film, each night in Until Dawn is different. Their goal is to survive until dawn.

When the plot kicked into gear, I was like, this isn’t Until Dawn, but it’s actually fun, and I’m enjoying it, so I don’t care. It’s not really “scary” since you know they’ll restart the night anyway, making their deaths emotionally meaningless. But it was fun. It was a unique twist to an overused formula, so I appreciated that it incorporated some variation.

Halfway through, Until Dawn becomes a different movie

The problem with Until Dawn is that it all falls apart. As I said, we have our plot, rules, and goals. But then, halfway through the film, one of the characters wakes up from a dream. She finds herself in the living room with her friends, and there’s been a massive time jump. We learn they’ve been there for 13 nights and suddenly have no memory of the previous evenings. It was shocking to see a movie go through all that work to create a setup, drop it, and then move on to something new halfway through the film.

From there, everything continues to crumble. A big chunk of the movie is watching the group run from things, whether it’s the masked killer, supernatural forces, or Wendigos. Director David F. Sandberg told THR he was excited to make a movie that combined so many horror tropes, saying, “This is awesome because it has every horror genre. I’ll get to do slasher, supernatural, body horror, monster, and found footage.’ It had everything in one movie, which is what really drew me to it.”

Unfortunately, Until Dawn never feels like an homage or nod to horror classics. It just feels like a big fiasco. There is an endless stream of horror-ish nonsense thrown at you, but no connective tissue to tie it together. Until Dawn feels more like a random series of events than a story. At a certain point, my eyes started to glaze over because there weren’t any scares, and worse, the movie had started breaking its own rules. Now, it was anything goes. We find ourselves in a realm of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, where anything can happen and your choices mean nothing because the supernatural whatever-it-is will just poof something new into existence to ruin it.

Until Dawn gives no answers

The film tries to tie it all together by bringing back Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare) from the game. In the video game, Dr. Hill somewhat acts as the narrator and is also Josh’s psychologist. But in the film, he’s completely unrecognizable as some grand architect of this psychotic “experiment” in a magical valley full of evil supernatural forces that have somehow remained undiscovered. But the experiment is also powered by the trauma of certain tormented people who have gotten lost there throughout the last century.

Dr. Hill’s motives are unclear. Whether he’s real or undead himself remains unclear. How and why he chooses his victims is unclear, and worst of all, we never figure out what this supernatural force is or why it teamed up with some psychologist. Who created the mystical valley, the time loop, or the monsters? If this sounds like a coherent, interesting plot, get yourself some popcorn and see Until Dawn.

But if you want scares, an interesting plot, or answers, Until Dawn won’t provide them. It will create even more questions because there’s an Easter egg at the end where the snowy cabin from the Until Dawn video game suddenly appears on the evil psychologist’s video monitors. To me, this is absolutely offensive because the film is now trying to bastardize the plot of the Until Dawn video game and insert its horrendous and nonsensical plotline instead.

The good news — there’s still the real Until Dawn

If you want to watch Until Dawn, my advice is to play the game instead. Its unique gameplay style makes it feel like an interactive movie anyway. It’s got a better plot, and your choices and actions have consequences. Depending on how you play, you can either have everyone survive, let everyone die, or have a mixture. Honestly, it’s way more fun and interesting.

Until Dawn is now playing in theaters.