The new movie “Until Dawn” is a horror/time loop film you’ve seen before, done worse. The 2025 film, based on the 2015 Sony Entertainment video game of the same name, is directed with competence by David F. Sandberg (“Annabelle: Creation”) but is quickly lost to its premise that attempts to do something new with the strangely saturated horror/time loop subgenre of movies like “Happy Death Day” and “Totally Killer.” Instead, “Until Dawn” completely misses the point of what makes its peers work: Their rules.
Time loop movies work because they follow a basic set of rules: The same things happen every loop, the environment stays the same and the main character goes through personal growth that breaks the loop. Now, these rules can be manipulated effectively, and “Until Dawn” sells an interesting premise in its trailer when Max (portrayed well by Michael Cimino) claims “every night something new is trying to kill us.” While that may violate the first rule of time loop pictures, it opens up a variety of possibilities for the filmmakers: Every night is a means of exploring how a monster can or can’t be conquered by how our characters interact with the environment, every loop is a new horror subgenre to play with and our characters must face new fears that they can grow from with each death.
The film only explores these possibilities twice.
“Until Dawn” begins like every modern big-budget horror picture: Our characters are led to a mysterious location, and are ungracefully defined by the emotions they say out loud instead of allowing the audience to make assumptions about them via their actions. Basic, ungraceful blockbuster writing. This flaw, however, is almost forgiven as we are launched into our premise with a more than decent slasher sequence — our characters are unknowingly in the first night of the loop, and are quickly dispatched by a Jason Voorhees knockoff that rid of them in dementedly gleeful showcases of gore. It’s plain, gross fun.
Then, the fun ends. Quickly we’re launched into the second night, which chooses to abandon any and all good faith the first night earned. A new monster is introduced but randomly disappears as we are introduced to another new monster who is also quickly gone and then we’re back to our masked killer from the first night again. The initial two monsters never appear in the film again.
This is the main issue with the film: A total lack of consistency. The “every night something new is trying to kill us” line that is in nearly every piece of advertisement? A lie. Rather, every night that follows (of the film’s thirteen nights of survival) features the same three monsters: The masked killer, the “wendigos” (a zombie-like antagonist from the video game) and a third threat that I won’t spoil as it is one of the few dementedly fun spectacles.
Along with the abandonment of its core premise, the movie carries on introducing new rules that are either quickly abandoned or are means of giving our characters an easy out from what should be sequences of enjoyable, perhaps even cathartic pain.
Rather, “Until Dawn” opts to be the safest R-rated movie it can be. The gore almost feels misplaced, and even sometimes mean-spirited in comparison to its completely safe, basic themes that are explored in repeated corny one-liners from our cast of characters that, say for a jock archetype that’s part of the primary group, feel too similar to each other to make any character arc feel special, deserved or remotely engaging.
That’s not to say horror movies demand layers, many of the best examples of the genre are simple thrill rides, but “Until Dawn” almost completely lacks the thrills. As mentioned, there are two nights in the film that are genuinely fun mini-genre films (the second I won’t spoil), but any energy earned is quickly dismissed by clunky exposition that doesn’t really explain anything, and doesn’t create enough mystery to be scary. Plainly, it’s boring.
The film feels designed for teenagers to sneak into (not that I’m encouraging it). The themes are explained to death (literally) so even half-listening audiences understand them, the gore only feels demented enough to shock a 13-year-old who’d probably laugh at it with their friends, and the ending demands no contemplation from the audience — perfect for the friend group to miss so they can open their phones to call back their worried parents.
“Until Dawn” is a frustrating theme park ride that lacks fun, simple attractions in place of the same old jumpscares you’d see in most other factory-made horror pictures. Numerous entertaining set pieces are foreshadowed but rarely, if ever explored (in theme with the lies of the film’s’ advertising), and any well-directed sequences gifted to us by Sandberg are quickly thrown away by our characters yelling at the audience about how they’re feeling, why they’re feeling this way and doing nothing to actually show how or why they’ve changed.
The most frustrating part is that there’s a great film here. The premise, as advertised, is a fun one, and Sandberg obviously has passion for the sequences he’s allowed to go all-out on. Sadly, the screenplay fails to match his thoughtful directing. Like the film, it’s a loop that seems to kill many modern horror movies. Hopefully, this death can teach them how to keep the genre alive next time.
“Until Dawn” is in theaters Friday, April 25.
Copy edited by Trinity Balboa
