By now, most people have realized that video game adaptations are either a hit or miss. This year, the Minecraft movie has taken over the box office, and now The Last of Us is back with season 2. However, the Until Dawn movie appears to be every bit as disappointing as everyone had anticipated, having nothing to do with the original plot and characters from the video game but instead introducing a new story that is supposed to be set in the same universe.
The game Until Dawn was developed by Supermassive Games and released on the PlayStation 4 in 2015. It is a survival horror, choice-based story that is beloved among horror fans. The game follows eight young adults who decide to reunite at a remote mountain lodge where two of their friends, Hannah and Beth, went missing a year prior due to a cruel prank gone wrong that drove them to run out into a snowstorm in the middle of the night. Upon their return, the characters responsible for the prank are then stalked and hunted down by a killer. That killer is then revealed to be Hannah and Beth’s brother, Josh, who wanted to get revenge on his friends for causing the disappearance of his sisters by playing horrific pranks on them. But things don’t go according to plan, and they are actually hunted down by a creature that is later revealed to be Hannah, who mutated into a monster after having succumbed to cannibalizing her lifeless twin sister, Beth, in order to survive. This is how the game introduces the ultimate antagonist in the story, the wendigo.
The game features a butterfly effect system where the player’s decisions affect the storyline and who dies to the monster. Replaying the game allows you to choose different options and obtain different endings; it is essentially already an 8-10 hour interactive movie. The way that the movie decided to adapt this was to put the 5 main characters in a time loop where they have to survive being in a cabin in the woods until dawn, and every time they die, the night restarts. This allows the characters to make multiple choices in order to avoid dying like in the game. Every few nights the characters have to face and try to survive a different supernatural threat. If they die enough times, they will start to mutate monster-like features.
The film decides to bring back the wendigos for them to survive; however, unlike the game, it doesn’t give them a clarifying and interesting backstory involving cannibalism, which is unfortunate since it feels like they were underused despite playing a huge role in the game. It seems like they were just thrown into the movie to please fans who complained about the lack of references to the game.
The premise of the movie seems to be somewhat similar to the game despite being a completely original story, so it seems like they did draw in some inspiration from it. The film synopsis reads, “One year after her sister disappeared, Clover and her friends head to the remote valley where she vanished to search for answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they soon encounter a masked killer who murders them one by one. However, when they mysteriously wake up at the beginning of the same night, they’re forced to relive the terror over and over again.” Both the movie and the game share core themes, such as both taking place at remote locations in the woods, centered around a group of young people, and characters having a tragic disappearance. But the movie’s weakness lies in its poor character development due to them coming across as boring and underdeveloped compared to the game’s characters. Since the characters died and came back multiple times throughout the movie, it became hard to care for them since their deaths were only used to drive the plot forward. It made the film seem confusing and underwhelming.
Another character from the game that they decided to bring back was Dr. Hill, a character in the game that speaks to the player between chapters. He takes on the role of a psychiatrist who gives the player therapy-like sessions and asks questions about occurrences in the game and opinions on the characters; it is later revealed that Dr. Hill is actually an imagined figure appearing in the mind of Josh. In the movie he plays a similar role, but he now appears as a figure to Clover, the protagonist. It seems like Dr. Hill was brought back to represent the mental state that Clover is in after losing her sister, just like how he represented the same thing for Josh after losing his sisters.
Although the character is not mentioned at all, Josh actually makes a small appearance in a file shown in an office in the movie. This could just be an Easter egg; however, fans suspect that this could be hinting at a sequel featuring him and bringing back Rami Malek to play him again.
Despite fans not liking the movie for not being an accurate depiction of the game, it is still a very enjoyable movie that has easter eggs, references, and pays homage to the game. It is a good prequel to Until Dawn, and even though it didn’t do a great job at correlating itself with the game, it still has everything that you would expect from a horror movie, such as good and creative kills and jumpscares, which would make it worth watching for any horror movie enthusiast.
