While I am currently trying to pester my partner into allowing me ownership of a sexy and slim PS5, I am very much aware of the fact that I barely have time to play the many videogames I have owned for years already. That includes Ghosts Of Tsushima. It includes some of the more recent Resident Evil games. And it includes Until Dawn, which I once spent about half an hour on. It's not that I disliked it. It's great. As are the other games mentioned. I just don't often have the time required for games that benefit from complete immersion and focus, which is why I end up playing some pinball or Tony Hawks levels instead.
What I am trying to make clear right now is that I don't have much experience, or knowledge, of the Until Dawn videogame. I know how it starts though, and I know that a bunch of young adults end up in an isolated location that starts to present them with a variety of horrors.
The main characters here are Clover (Ella Rubin), Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abe (Belmont Cameli). They end up in the middle of nowhere while Clover tries to retrace the steps of her missing sister, Melanie (Maia Mitchell). It isn't long until something scary starts happening, but any fear they experience is exacerbated by the realisation that they're also stuck in a timeloop that starts over whenever they die. Is there a way to stop the cycle, and does it have anything to do with Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare)?
While I have seen some complaints from videogame fans who didn't like the direction taken by this, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did it feel as if it at least tried to stay aligned to the essence of the game, certainly in the opening act, but it turned into something bloodier and more twisted than I thought it would be. Writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler work well together, sketching out the characters and premise succinctly enough to pack a healthy amount of scare sequences into the 103-minute runtime, and director David F. Sandberg continues his run of movies that show him to be a very capable pair of hands, if perhaps rarely great (his previous best feature also being written by Dauberman, Annabelle: Creation).
As for the cast, they all know that they're in the film to be put through the wringer. I have seen Rubin in a number of films now. She can do well in the right role, although she doesn't quite feel like a strong enough lead for this. She's not bad, but it's only in the third act that it becomes easier to root for her while the odds against survival grow exponentially. Cimino and Cameli are perfectly fine, I guess, but they're outshone by both A'zion and Yoo, who just have a bit more screen presence, perhaps due to them simply not being as generic as the "himbo #1 and himbo #2" casting calls for their male counterparts. Stormare has fun with his role, and his presence is one of the elements creating, and maintaining, an essential link between the film and the videogame.
From the little I know of the videogame, and I've made clear how little that is, I liked the way it was adapted into a feature. There's still some familiar visuals, the timeloop serves as a way to make everything feel similar to a more standard videogame premise (although it should be noted that Until Dawn is celebrated for NOT being a standard videogame), and things are put together with a healthy balance of fun and frights. Despite the criticisms of some who wanted something more faithful, this is quite a fun crowd-pleaser. AND it makes me want to carve out some more time in my schedule to finally fully play through the game.
8/10
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