A group of friends go on a trip to find the missing sister of one of them, and they end up on a property where they die several times and can’t escape. What is the key to escaping this hellhole?
Until Dawn is based on a PlayStation game that I’ve wanted to play for a long time, but I haven’t found the time yet. It’s supposed to be a really good game, and I was interested to see what the movie had to offer. But I can’t compare the game to the movie.
Until Dawn is at its best in the first 50 minutes, where it has that mystery and atmosphere that I really enjoy—when you don’t know what’s going on. It reminded me a bit of A Nightmare on Elm Street, especially with the spooky house and the sexy, rotten witch bitch.
But then it’s time to reveal the mystery, and that was a downer. The problem is that the monsters in the movie are not frightening—they’re just generic monsters you’ve seen in hundreds of movies. They all look alike, and they’re not scary. Except for the cool witch bitch, the other evil characters in the movie are just generic all day long too. So, the scenes that were supposed to be intense felt dead to me, and I just wish the movie had focused more on the pretty solid atmosphere in the first 50 minutes and not shown so many of the monsters. The movie is at least pretty graphic, which surprised me.
The characters in the movie are just there to be killed and not cared for. They are poorly written, and the movie never tries to make you like the characters. You can see that in the storyline about the sister looking for her missing sister—the dramaturgy is awful. So there’s no chance for you to bond with these empty characters.
The first half of the movie is solid, but then the second half happens, and it goes downhill with a generic horror plot that has no surprises. That doesn’t work for me anymore, since I’ve watched so many movies in my life. The ending is also pretty terrible and an anticlimax.