Sony Pictures’ Until Dawn movie has a decent build-up to its release. Despite a decent chunk of below-par reactions to the movie’s teaser and trailer, there lurked a lingering hope that the movie might surprise the audience when it releases in theaters on April 25, 2025.
Inspired by the PlayStation Studios’ original motion game ‘Until Dawn’, the premise of the movie was pretty much known to every horror genre follower. However, what created a decent amount of buzz was how the makers of the Until Dawn movie will be able to bring the charm of the well-known gaming title onto the big screen in the form of an actual horror-thriller movie.
Until Dawn movie: Story, screenplay, and direction
Until Dawn follows a set pattern of the storyline wherein five friends get trapped in a mysterious house and find themselves stuck in a sinister game of life and death, from which they must rescue themselves through a limited set of rules. However, despite the story being decent enough to keep the viewers hooked, it never really surprises you with a solid interlinking to the chronological events in the past, leading to the current scenario of things.
There are phases in the movie that try to open certain interesting link-ups between the reason behind what’s happening inside the house and the victims of it, but the writing never really nails it with a complete justification of things. Talking about the screenplay, it is helped by the fact that the writers, Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, and the director David F. Sandberg do get most of the basic horror elements right in scarier scenes, and so does the screenplay, which perfectly balances the tense-atmospheric mood in those scenes.
All in all, David F. Sandberg has done a decent job directing the movie with whatever he could conjure up under such high expectations from a project like this. Even though there is nothing to shout about here, the honest effort to make it better than just an average horror-thriller flick shows up on the big screen and acts as a savior.
Until Dawn movie: Cast and the top two performances
The Until Dawn movie’s lead cast includes names like Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Belmont Cameli, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, and Peter Stormare. While most of the lead cast deliver a decent enough performance to connect with the audience, some of the performances stand out.
Ella Rubin, playing the character named Clover, looked so confident on camera in most of the scenes. Her composure, dialogue delivery in tense scenes, sharp body language, and feared eyes were enough to signify an honest and bold performance.
The surprise factor in the Until Dawn movie was Peter Stormare. Despite limited screen time, he plays his part to near-perfection and delivers a solid performance. Although one can say that a bit more polishing to his character could have acted as icing on the cake.
Final Word
The Until Dawn movie is not one that you can ignore if you are a fan of the horror-thriller genre. A lot of movies falling under the horror category have come out in the recent past, which have had nothing new to offer. However, Until Dawn does have its moments. Furthermore, crisp editing by Michel Aller does help in maintaining the on-screen pace, resulting in a decent one-time watch.
Our rating: 6.7/10
‘Until Dawn’ run-time: 1 hr 43 min
