Until Dawn (2025)

Written by MovieGuys on May 28, 2025

"Until Dawn" is what I call "Scoobie Do" for adults. There's a group of pals, out for a vacation romp, who find themselves facing a mysterious back story and lots of supernatural baddies, out to croak them, in bloody style.

What makes this even worse than the usual formulaic, survivalist, horror nonsense, is its story is based upon a time loop. So, in essence, this is a horror flick, with obsessive compulsive disorder. The murder and mayhem repeats itself, stripping away even the basic sense of the unknown, as we stop wondering and worrying over, who is going to die and when.

I can see how this would work in the context of a video game, which this film, is based upon. In games players die over and over, until they finally find a way to beat the game. As a film, its not a great idea, at all. A sense of lethargy and boredom sets in, as everyone dies over and over again.

Without sounding too negative, there is a limited upside. The atmosphere of dread is well established, creature effects are reasonable, as is acting, from the cast. The deaths are varied too, so its not wholly a case of deja vu.

In summary, a basic watch that breaks the first rule of survivalist horror, with everyone dying, repeatedly. In turn, the sense of urgency and threat is dissipated, leading to a somewhat tedious, fundamentally repetitive, watch.