Until Dawn (2025)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Time Bomb

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

David F. Sandberg's horror movie Until Dawn has a few good touches here and there, but it ultimately succumbs to a poor sense of rhythm, and to the nagging feeling that none of this really makes very much sense.

It has been a year since her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell) has gone missing, and Clover (Ella Rubin) has organized a road trip with her best friends to re-trace Melanie's steps. Along for the ride are Max (Michael Cimino), who once dated Clover and still has a thing for her, plus old pals Megan (Ji-young Yoo) and Nina (Odessa A'zion), and Nina's boyfriend Abe (Belmont Cameli).

They stop for gas and Clover speaks to the creepy old proprietor (Peter Stormare), who warns them about Glore Valley, where many people have disappeared. The gang heads there, and after being stuck in a terrible rainstorm, happen upon a visitor center that, miraculously is spared from the rain.

Once inside, things don't seem right, and it's not long before Abe Is slashed up by a masked killer. Weirdly, the day somehow resets itself, and the friends have another chance to survive. But how many chances will they get before it's all over?

Built like a "cabin in the woods"-type horror movie, and crossed with Groundhog Day and Happy Death Day, Until Dawn gets one major thing right. In most of those kinds of slasher movies the friends never seem like actual friends, just "types" that some casting director threw together. In this, they really seem to have a shared history, and they care about each other. They refuse to escape their trap unless they can all escape together.

That's a refreshing and moving touch, but it's in service of a sluggish movie. The timing is all off. A character walks through a door, and we cut to another character doing something in another room, and we cut back, and even though some time has passed, the first character is only still just getting through the door.

But that's nothing compared to the movie's inner logic. It introduces a villain character that is in charge of the evil plan, but he claims that it's Clover and her fears and anxieties that are really causing everything, driving everything. That's absurd, but even more absurd is the fact that the villain is bringing everyone back to life each night, a detail that is flat-out ignored.

In other words, Until Dawn lazily half-explains itself, with some lore in place and the rest just disregarded. Clearly a pitch for a "time-loop/slasher movie" ripoff (based on a video game) was enough to secure funding. No further ideas were necessary.