Until Dawn (2025)

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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The Invitation (2022)

If you're going to update a classic horror tale, but want to keep it all feeling like an old-fashioned slice of gothic, then you could do a lot worse than watching The Invitation, where director Jessica M. Thompson and writer Blair Butler show us exactly how it should be done.

Nathalie Emmanuel plays Evie, a young American woman who finds herself in a whole new world when a DNA/family tree test leads to her discovering relatives she was previously completely unaware of. They may be distant relatives, but it gives her a chance to visit their lavish home in England, where her distant cousin, Oliver (Hugh Skinner), does his best to ensure that Evie isn't made to feel too uncomfortable. Unaccustomed to mingling with the upper-class, Evie is both intrigued and upset by what she sees around her, particularly when it comes to the way the head butler (Sean Pertwee) treats the staff, but she soon becomes much more relaxed in the company of the charming Walter (Thomas Doherty), the lord of the manor. Maybe Evie will end up making a new home in England, but she will have to deal with the skeletons in the family closet first.

There's nothing in The Invitation that will surprise, or even impress, most viewers. Every main story beat feels familiar, and the execution of the scares, and how they are doled out en route to a third act that completely clarifies everything (not that this is a complex or unpredictable plot), is in line with 101 other horror movies. That doesn't make it bad though. In fact, the wonderfully traditional visuals and witty, self-aware, script come together to create something that is, first and foremost, fun. Thompson heads up a very talented crew, considering what we see onscreen, and Butler enjoys setting up the film in a very specific way, playfully revealing key details throughout the second half, and then having all of the pieces in place for the expected rip-roaring finale.

Emmanuel is an excellent lead, and this is probably the biggest movie role I've seen her given. Here's to many more. She's a naturally captivating screen presence, and convinces here as someone who can feel like a welcome breath of fresh air in a stuffy old English manor. Doherty is as suave and charming as he needs to be, Skinner does another one of his endearing "oh gosh, nice, posh" performances, and Pertwee is enjoyably blunt in many of his exchanges with people he considers beneath his employers. Carol Ann Crawford and Tian Chaudhry get to play supporting characters who are surprisingly integral to the main plot strand, and Alana Boden and Stephanie Corneliussen are two very privileged young women who couldn't be more dissimilar in the way that they act around Evie.

I'm sure that some will be put off by the decision to fill the frame with things like unsettling stonework figures, billowing curtains, and large rooms that people are forbidden to enter, it's all a bit more Shirley Jackson than Peter Jackson, but that's what helps it stand out. This isn't another new horror movie trying to break any kind of world record for bloodshed, nor is it a film trying to use new tech as the central "demon". It's a film that takes something old, twists and plays around with it for a while, then turns it into something that feels enjoyably different. Some people may resent the core of the premise, but I thought it was both witty and entertaining.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Polaroid (2019)

Here we go again, it's another one of those teen horrors that almost seem so deliberately bad you would almost think it's either a) a parody of mainstream teen horror, or b) something churned out by film-makers who attended an online course entitled "How To Create And Sell Teen Horror 101", for a total course fee of $150, including $25 to get your framed certificate at the end of it all (email versions available for the much lower price of $5).

There's a Polaroid camera at the heart of this one, of course.You take photos with is, a shadowy figure appears in the photos, and then the people in the phoros end up dying. This is a pattern very easily spotted by quirky high school student Bird Fitcher (Kathryn Prescott, and, yes, someone decided that could actually be someone's name . . . apologies to the multitude of people named Bird Fitcher out there). In fact, she and her friends accept this strange scenario very quickly, investigating the history of the camera, who created it, and trying not to be viewed with too much suspicion by Sheriff Pembroke (Mitch Pileggi).

Directed by Lars Klevberg (who did better work on the sorely-misjudged remake/reworking of Child's Play), it's hard to view this as anything more than an unfocused and derivative mess of a horror film that doesn't have any good intentions. There ARE very occasional moments that stand out, I can think of two highlights in the third act that prove to be too little too late, but the direction is disappointingly mediocre throughout, and the script, by Blair Butler, is one of the worst I can think of in recent memory. None of the characters are worth giving a shit about, the dialogue meanders between the eye-rollingly inane and the horribly dull, and the way the plot unfolds is all the worse because Butler clearly thinks he has some good ideas to add to the mix (someone should have told him that he really doesn't).

I want to spend a decent amount of time also complaining about Prescott, who has all of the screen presence of a piece of plasterboard, but it's unfair to criticise her for being unable to do any more with a script that has all of the strength of wet toilet roll. The only two people who manage to polish the turd for a few minutes at a time are Pileggi, unsurprisingly, and also Grace Zabriskie (again, unsurprisingly so). These two veterans are given just enough screentime to lift this whole endeavour from the very bottom of the barrel, and they both do their usual good work with material that really doesn't deserve their effort. Tyler Young, Samantha Logan, Keenan Tracey, Priscilla Quintana, et al aren't so much a decent supporting cast as more of a collection of H & M models who were hanging around when the casting director realised it was the day before principal shooting was about to begin.

In case I have not made myself absolutely clear above, this is horrible. One to avoid, even if you're an undemanding teen horror fan. I've STILL seen much worse, but that doesn't excuse just how bad this is. Or, I guess you could say, how undeveloped.

3/10

If you hate yourself then you can buy the movie here.

Netflix And Chill: Hell Fest (2018)

There are two horror films, that I know of, that came out in 2018 with the word fest making up part of the title. This is one, and the other is Blood Fest. Both of them involve a killer causing havoc at a major fan event. Both of them play around with slasher movie tropes. And both of them have a sense of playfulness about them. But Blood Fest is the more playful of the two. It's also better.

Not that this is a bad film. It's fine, for what it is. It's just a shame that what it IS is a pale Scream-wannabe that feels at least a decade too late. They even seem to hedge their bets by casting Bex Taylor-Klaus (who played Audrey Jensen in the abysmal Scream: The TV Series), which backfires due to the fact it will remind viewers that Scream: The TV Series exists.

But let's cover the basics. Amy Forsyth is Natalie, a young woman who ends up going along to a horror-filled amusement park with her friend, Brooke (Reign Edwards), another young woman (Taylor, played by Taylor-Klaus), and three young men. After some time spent enjoying the thrills of the park, the group soon realise that they are being followed by someone with an all-too-keen interest in them. Unfortunately, it's impossible to keep track of this killer, because he looks like so many of the masked workers in the park, and he can get away with murdering people in plain sight, because everyone thinks it is fake anyway.

There's not too much to complain about here, not really. Especially if you're the kind of horror fan who spends most weeks wading through some dross to find the gems (and that is really what most horror fans do, if we're being completely honest).

Gregory Plotkin directs with a decent eye, and this is a big step up from his first feature, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. The set ups for each big moment of tension may be fairly predictable, but Plotkin still does his best by them, with the horror park obviously fertile ground for such sequences.

This is also a big step up for Seth M. Sherwood, co-writer of the script with Blair Butler. Sherwood previously gave us the poor franchise entry that was Leatherface (2017), but he does just enough here to allow me to forgive him and move on. It's just a shame that the script doesn't make even more of the setting. I can't put my finger on it, and it may sound silly when you consider that 80% of the movie takes place in the horror park, but it always seems to be missing a number of opportunities to really crank things up with a tension only felt by the leads while everyone else around them remains oblivious. It comes closest to doing this well in a fantastic third act moment that has Taylor-Klaus jokingly offering herself up as someone guilty of crimes that warrant death by guillotine.

Most of the cast members are pretty interchangeable, with the exception of Tony Todd in a nice little cameo, but Forsyth is fine in her role, and Taylor-Klaus gets to constantly energise the group with an infectious enthusiasm for the whole experience. Nobody stinks up the screen, which is a big plus, even if there isn't anyone truly standing out either.

Although I started this review by mentioning that Blood Fest is the better film, there's not much in it. This is a decent, slick, slasher movie that has a number of great visuals throughout to make up for the disappointing lack of deadly set-pieces.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.