'Until Dawn' struggles to bring the game’s horror magic to the big screen

"Until Dawn" turns a once-thrilling horror experience into a repetitive and lifeless slasher film.

Ella Rubin in “Until Dawn.” (c) Kerry Brown/Sony Pictures

By Anna Fadiah and Hayu Andini

Watching someone else play a video game that you are not allowed to touch is a unique kind of boring. That same feeling of helpless dullness sets in early and lingers throughout Until Dawn, the new supernatural slasher film based on the wildly popular horror video game. Until Dawn struggles to capture the spirit of the original horror game, delivering a lifeless and repetitive slasher film that lacks the chilling magic fans loved.

The original Until Dawn game stood out for its eerie setting, interactive gameplay, and the constant tension of knowing every decision could mean life or death for a character. By contrast, the film adaptation removes the interactive element and leans heavily on a traditional slasher formula. Unfortunately, without player agency, the movie feels like a hollow shell of what made the original experience so gripping.

A familiar but lifeless setup

The story follows Clover (Ella Rubin) and her group of friends as they make a predictably poor decision: venturing into a remote valley's welcome center to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Clover’s sister. Their journey quickly turns deadly when a masked killer begins stalking and murdering them one by one. While this setup could have delivered tension and dread, Until Dawn instead offers a parade of clichés that audiences have seen countless times before.

The film tries to differentiate itself with a twist reminiscent of Happy Death Day. Each time a character dies, an hourglass resets the timeline by a few hours, forcing the group to relive the horror over and over again. It is an intriguing concept on paper. However, in execution, Until Dawn fumbles its time loop gimmick with confusing rules and sloppy storytelling. The clock becomes more of a cheap plot device than a source of genuine suspense.

A director lost in repetition

David F. Sandberg, best known for Annabelle: Creation, directs Until Dawn with a mechanical approach that drains the story of energy. Sandberg has proven he can create atmospheric horror in the past, but here, he seems boxed in by a screenplay that offers little for him to work with. Written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, the script lacks memorable characters, sharp dialogue, or any sense of escalating dread.

Instead, the film trudges through predictable beats: eerie noises in the dark, friends splitting up (always a bad idea), fake-out scares, and telegraphed deaths. Each death is reversed so often that it becomes impossible to care about who lives or dies. There's no true sense of danger or consequence — and without that, horror falls flat.

The time loop concept had potential to explore fear in deeper ways. Imagine a film where characters desperately try new strategies to survive, learning from their past mistakes. Sadly, Until Dawn misses that opportunity. The resets feel arbitrary, and the characters rarely show growth or even awareness that could make the loop dynamic meaningful.

Flat characters and wasted potential

One of the biggest letdowns of Until Dawn is how forgettable the characters are. In the video game, even minor characters had personalities that made players root for them or against them. In the movie, Clover and her friends seem plucked from a rejected Goosebumps episode — thinly drawn archetypes who exist solely to be killed off in gruesome ways.

Ella Rubin tries her best to bring emotional weight to Clover, but the script gives her little to work with. The rest of the cast fades into the background, offering few memorable performances. As a result, the audience feels detached from the characters' fates, which drains the horror sequences of any real tension.

The antagonist, meanwhile, is a masked killer with unclear motivations. Eventually, the story reveals a convoluted plot involving a deranged madman conducting experiments on fear itself. However, the explanation arrives too late to make an impact, and by then, most viewers will have stopped caring.

Bright spots buried under mediocrity

Despite its many flaws, Until Dawn does offer brief moments of visual creativity. A handful of death scenes, especially one involving spontaneous combustion, are gruesomely inventive and repulsively funny. These scenes hint at a darker, more gleeful horror-comedy tone that the film never fully embraces.

Sandberg’s skill with practical effects and creepy imagery occasionally shines through the gloom. There are a few shots — a flickering hallway illuminated by an hourglass's falling sand, a frozen lake cracking underfoot — that suggest what Until Dawn could have been with a stronger narrative foundation.

But these moments are few and far between. Most of the film looks and feels uninspired, with generic sets and an overreliance on dark, murky lighting that makes the action hard to follow. Instead of building an atmospheric sense of place like the game did, the movie’s setting feels anonymous and underutilized.

The challenge of adapting interactive horror

Until Dawn is not the first video game adaptation to stumble, and it will not be the last. Video games like Until Dawn work because players are active participants in the story. Every decision carries weight, and every death feels personal. Stripping away that interactivity leaves behind a linear story that needs to stand on its own merits — a challenge this film was not up to meeting.

Rather than finding new ways to engage viewers, the filmmakers seem content to mimic slasher tropes without adding anything fresh. Worse, the movie seems to misunderstand what made the game compelling in the first place. It was not just about jump scares and bloody deaths; it was about choice, consequence, and psychological terror. None of that survives the transition to the big screen.

A horror experience that resets too often

In the end, Until Dawn feels like a disappointing echo of the game it is based on. Fans who hoped to see their favorite horror story come to life will be let down by the film’s muddled plot, cardboard characters, and missed opportunities. Casual horror fans might find a few cheap thrills, but even they are likely to grow tired of the repetitive structure and lack of real stakes.

With stronger writing, more memorable characters, and a better grasp of the time loop mechanic, Until Dawn could have been a clever, chilling horror experience. Instead, it is a forgettable film that, much like its doomed characters, keeps resetting only to meet the same sorry fate.