Picture Friday the 13th set in a haunted house, trapped inside a glitchy VCR that keeps looping awkwardly, with half the scenes scrambled. Welcome to Until Dawn (2025), a movie that hurls every horror subgenre, from splatter to the supernatural and everything in between, often to its detriment as it collapses under its own weight.
We plunged into this one blind and were surprised to find out the movie is based on a video game of the same name. The opening credits hit us with a PlayStation mention, sending us scrambling to Google afterward to learn about its gaming roots. The movie cherry-picks bits of the game but makes significant changes, ditching the game’s snowy lodge for an abandoned visitor center. It also swaps its focus for a Groundhog Day style time loop dilemma that keeps the gang stuck in a cycle they must outwit or die trying.
The time loop concept, cooked up by writers Gary Dauberman, the guy behind the IT reboot, and Blair Butler, is what sets this movie apart and grabs your interest. It's paired with director David F. Sandberg, who has some noteworthy horror titles under his belt like Lights Out and Annabelle. Together, it seems like a lot of experience under one umbrella, but the result is a genre-blending, chaotic movie with questionable acting and a mostly sloppy structure that overwhelms itself with too much going on.
It all kicks off with a woman being chased and clawing her way out of an underground lair. She bursts into freedom, only to pull the oldest horror movie blunder in the book: collapsing in a heap of “I’m safe now” relief instead of using that adrenaline to sprint for the hills. It’s the kind of cliché that makes you want to yell, “Run, don’t rest!” at the screen. It ends up being a curtain call, as a maniac wearing a clown mask ends her.
Our dead girl is Melanie (Maia Mitchell), whose disappearance ignites a desperate search by her sister, Clover (Ella Rubin), who rallies up a crew of friends as they hit the road to retrace Melanie’s final trail.
No horror road trip is complete without the obligatory stop at a gas station, where a cryptic local who seems to know more than they let on doles out vague warnings about people going missing in the small mining town of Glore Valley. The role of the cryptic attendant at the rusty-looking Hartley’s Gas Station is played by Swedish actor Peter Stormare. His jet-black dye job and signature style always make us think he’s just one step away from slipping back into his role as mobster John Abruzzi from Prison Break.
With danger ahead in Glore Valley, that’s naturally where Clover and her friends — Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abe (Belmont Cameli) foolishly steer their fate toward a forgotten visitor center. As a storm rolls in like a dark omen, it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t the kind of place you just pass through. A large, prominently displayed missing persons board inside details those who’ve vanished—just as Stormare’s character warned. Like something out of that old Eagles song, "You can checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave."
If you’re looking for a spectacle of splatter, combustions, and some standout kills, this one delivers in that regard. However, it shoots itself in the foot with the introduction of its grotesque humanoid monsters called Wendigos. A style of monster that’s been done to death in horror and deserve a permanent break. These tired monsters hog too much spotlight, quickly zapping the enjoyment out of it.
The saving grace is the return of the clown-faced Jason Voorhees knock-off, complete with an adapted menacing style, superhuman strength, and mannerisms that feel inspired by the iconic slasher. Each night, he, along with the Wendigos, hunts Clover’s crew as a massive hourglass ticks down, resetting their nightmare in a relentless time loop with one rule: “Survive the night or become a part of it.” It’s a cool premise, but when the movie piles on slasher, possessions, monster mayhem, and found-footage gimmicks, it’s like a DJ mixing too many tracks and ruining the tune.