With The Last Of Us season 2 well underway, the second series of Fallout in production, and Minecraft dominating the box office, it’s safe to say video game adaptations have changed somewhat. Gone are the days when they’re doomed to flop with legions of fans complaining about the finer details of the narrative and characters – now, video game adaptations can actually be pretty solid. And the latest to get the reboot treatment is Supermassive Games’ award-winning Until Dawn.
Released in 2015, the horror game begins with Hannah and Beth Washington running into the woods during a party at a remote mountain resort when a prank by their friends goes wrong. The girls go missing, and one year later, their brother Josh organizes a get-together with the group from the previous party. But things begin to go awry when strange and deadly phenomena begin to occur.
Until Dawn has a butterfly effect structure, in which decisions you make will affect how the narrative progresses – and who survives it. It featured an all-star voice cast who also lent their likeness to their characters, including Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, Noah Fleiss, Galadriel Steinman, Nichole Sakura, Jordan Fisher, Brett Dalton, Meaghan Martin, and Peter Stormare. It was followed by a spiritual sequel, The Quarry, in 2022, and Until Dawn was nominated for numerous accolades.
Now, the acclaimed game is coming to the big screen as a feature film from horror maestro David F. Sandberg. Until Dawn fans had been somewhat skeptical as to how its unique concept and gameplay could translate to the big screen, but it seems as if the terror we’ve come to know and love will still be injected into every scene. Ahead of Until Dawn’s release later this month, we have all the details you need to know to survive the night – from the film’s release date to cast, plot, and whether it will follow the games.
Release date
Until Dawn is released in theaters on April 25, just four months shy of the video game’s 10th anniversary. It isn’t the only video game film that has been released this month, with A Minecraft Movie in theaters on April 4. It’s likely the two will appeal to very different demographics as Until Dawn won’t lose any of its audience to Steve and co – and hopefully won’t incite the same amount of feral behavior in theaters to boot.
Will it follow the same story as the games?
No, the Until Dawn movie will not follow the same story as the games. The film takes the basic premise of the original game and fleshes it out with an entirely new bunch of characters, cast, and approach to the horror.
So, how is it an Until Dawn film? Well, the film is set to follow a group of young people in a remote cabin tormented by nightmarish creatures, which sounds like several other horror films on the market. What sets this one apart is how it will attack the game’s butterfly effect narrative by incorporating a sort of Groundhog Day horror element.
In the Until Dawn film, the characters find that when they die, the night resets itself and they become stuck in a time loop, with a new villain hunting them down every time. They find that to escape, they must survive…Until dawn. Get it? Because Until Dawn.
Anyway. The official synopsis reads: “One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening. Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.”
The film adaptation of Until Dawn pays homage to its predecessor in its themes, structure, and likely some little Easter eggs. In trailers, we get a glimpse of the creatures stalking the group, which includes a Wendigo. Fans of the games will recognize the creature as a main antagonist you must fend yourself against. We also see an old, ghostly woman that resembles the Hag of Hackett’s Quarry from The Quarry, so we could get a healthy dose of references from Supermassive Games’ entire catalog. We also see a masked killer hacking at the group, so the Psycho is still very much a part of Until Dawn’s world.
Speaking to Screen Rant, Sandberg explained his reasoning behind taking such a bold approach to the adaptation: “The game is pretty much a 10-hour movie, so I think it wouldn’t have been as interesting for me if we were doing just the game, because then it’s going to be like a cut-down, non-interactive version of the game, which just wouldn’t be the same thing. So, I was very excited to read the script and see that it took Until Dawn further and did more with it, but also kept — when you play the game, the fun part of it is sort of replaying it and making different choices for the characters and see different deaths and all these things.”
He continued: “And that was so brilliantly incorporated in movie form, which is non-interactive, but you can still get the different outcomes, which I thought was brilliant, and very exciting for me, who’ve been wanting to return to horror for a while. But then, I was considering, like, ‘Oh, well, what kind of genre do I want to do for my return to horror? A slasher movie, or supernatural movie, or body horror, or found footage or monster movie?’ And then, this script came along, and it had everything in it, so it was the perfect thing, and I wanted to do it immediately.”
Cast
The bulk of the game’s cast is not returning for the film, with the exception of one key player who we will come to later. Clover, the film’s protagonist, will be played by Ella Rubin, best known for her roles in Anora and The Idea of You. She is also set to star in the new Fear Street film, Prom Queen. Clover’s older sister Melanie, who went missing one year prior to the events of the film, will be played by Teen Beach Movie’s Maia Mitchell.
The cast is rounded out by Annabelle Comes Home’s Michael Cimino, Freaky Tales’ Ji-young Yoo, Hellraiser’s Odessa A’zion, and Along for the Ride’s Belmont Cameli. Peter Stormare, who previously portrayed Dr Alan J. Hill in the game, is returning to star in the film, though he is set to take on the role of an entirely different character. As mentioned previously, the film is set to be directed by Sandberg, best known for his work in Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation.
Sandberg spoke about his delight in casting Stormare in the film after trying to nab him for an entirely different project, telling Screen Rant: “I love Peter and I love that we have that connection to the game. We have a lot of references, of course, but it feels like we needed this real throughline, which we get with the Hill character. I can’t really get into specifics about how he plays into all of this, but he is a part of it, for sure. And for me, as a fellow Swede, it has been a dream to work with Peter for forever. I actually tried to get him for my first movie, Lights Out, as the dad of the family, and the studio was like, ‘He can’t play a family guy. He’s way too creepy.’ So, it’s been like a dream for almost 10 years now to work with him, and I finally got to do it.”
Trailer
Until Dawn’s first teaser was released earlier this year giving fans their first glimpse into the major differences between the movie and the game. In a featurette, writer Gary Dauberman explained: “I’m a huge fan of the Until Dawn game and how cinematic it was. I thought a lot about how we could continue the story without just giving the audience the same experience that they got when they were playing.”
The first full trailer arrived in January, hammering home the time loop aspect of the game with several bloody kills and increasing confusion and panic from the ensemble cast. A second trailer, released in February, gave fans an eagerly anticipated close-up of the monsters set to wreak havoc on the group. It also hints at the various horror subgenres it is inspired by, from pregnancy horror to body horror, creature features, slashers, and everything in between.
Until Dawn looks to be a real love letter to horror – and a bloody one at that. Within the first 10 seconds, we see a swinging blade plunge into a character, and there are plenty more where that came from in under two minutes. Despite us getting a good look at our villains, the trailers don’t actually tell us too much about how the teens will break the time loop, and what exactly Stormare’s character has to do with it all, so there’s still many mysteries to uncover.
Production
The film was initially announced in January 2024 with Sandberg and Dauberman attached, immediately sending fans into a frenzy. By August, much of the cast had signed on in undisclosed roles before principal photography began in Budapest on the fifth of the month. Filming wrapped on October 4, with the first teasers arriving early this year.
Blair Butler, who wrote the script, spoke to Dread Central about the difficulties in tackling Until Dawn: “To be totally honest, when I came on to this project, I loved the game. I feel like Supermassive and Larry Fessenden and Graham Resnick, the writers of the game, created this perfect playable horror movie that literally starred an Academy Award-winning actor. So that was going to be totally impossible to top. And we knew that the remaster would be coming out around the same time. And that was another reason that everyone felt like, wow, we don’t want to try to remake the original storyline beat for Beat because that feels a little blasphemous.”
She continued: “So early on we collaborated with PlayStation to try and explore the untold Dawn universe. And the things that we really took as our guiding lights for the movie were the things that made the game so special. The fact that it is this love letter to horror movies, the idea that with a few exceptions, you could save almost everyone in the game or get everyone killed in horrible ways. And we also all loved the way that it starts as one horror genre because you think it’s a slasher movie and then it turns into something totally different, a supernatural monster movie.”
Additionally, Sandberg told Polygon how he essentially wanted to unite a bunch of horror movie subgenres in Until Dawn: “We get pretty much all of it in here — slasher, supernatural, body horror, found footage, even monsters. To me, who’s been wanting to do a horror movie for forever, it was great to get to do all of it and try subgenres I hadn’t before.” After fiercely dividing fan opinion, it isn’t long until cinemagoers can see exactly how Until Dawn’s adaptation lives up to the video game’s beloved, blood-soaked legacy.
Watch Until Dawn only in theaters April 25.
