Film Review: UNTIL DAWN (2025): This Paint-By-Numbers Horror Film is a Gore-Soaked Mess

Until Dawn Review

Until Dawn (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by David F. Sandberg, written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, and starring Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, and Peter Stormare.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of five 20-something-year-olds on a road trip wander off the beaten path and get caught in a killer’s trap. One by one they are dispatched in increasingly violent ways until our “final girl” can save the day. Now, that could be the plot to about one thousand horror films, and that would include David F. Sandberg’s 2025 adaptation of the popular video game Until Dawn, but it thinks it’s smarter than that. Or, it thinks the audience isn’t smart enough to notice the overwhelmingly generic plot, characters, and setting by relying on a “time loop” element that doesn’t seem to add anything to the film.

Either way, the end result feels like an algorithm-created studio horror film that lacks creativity, heart, and, most of all, scares.

Until Dawn opens with a group of five young adults on the road in search of their best friend’s missing sister. Clover (Ella Rubin) plays our lead, and it’s her sister Melanie that the gang is trying to track down. She’s accompanied by Max (Michael Cimino), the longing, sensitive ex-boyfriend; Megan (Ji-young Yoo), who possesses psychic abilities; and the lovey-dovey couple, Abe (Belmont Cameli) and Nina (an underused Odessa A’zion, who led the excellent 2022 Hellraiser reboot).

Each of these five are variations on characters we have seen get murdered on screen since the dawn of the slasher film. And that would be fine if the plot had given them any depth other than the surface-level descriptions included in this review.

On their trip to find Melanie, they stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere (think Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Wrong Turn, The Hills Have Eyes… do you get the point?) where the always charming Peter Stormare makes his first appearance. It’s worth noting that he was also featured in the original video game, so the casting choice wasn’t nearly as creative as his scene-stealing portrayal of Lucifer in Constantine or the Russian psychopath in Fargo.

After leaving the gas station, the gang finds themselves trapped at a secluded visitor center with a creepy hourglass… And… did it just flip? The five friends must relive the same night as they are hunted by a variety of different beasts (that all sort of feel the same) until they can survive until the morning.

This is where the main problem with the film comes to light. The script by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler is a lifeless shrug that takes no interest in exploring character or theme. Instead, what the film does is give us gruesome and creative ways to watch our lead characters die, which is fun the first time, okay and maybe the second and third, but will tire you out after that.

It takes none of the risks or stabs (pun intended) that something like Happy Death Day (2017) does. Both feature masked killers, a mystery, and a time loop element. In fairness, they are different films with different agendas, but where that film gains steam the more times the lead character dies, Until Dawn slows to a snail’s pace. The performances are sound from the young actors, and the direction is solid, but it’s the dialogue and character development that leave you with that hollow feeling at the end of the picture.

It’s not easy to create a fresh and exciting horror film, but one can’t help feeling cynical when a popular Sony-made video game is turned into a film by a Sony-owned studio. The risk is not worth the reward, and in turn, we are left with a half-baked horror film that tries to shower the audience with gore to hide its overwhelming blemishes.

Rating: 3/10

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