In 2014, Sony released Until Dawn for the PlayStation 4, and it was awesome. I would actually rank Until Dawn right up there as one of the best horror games of that console generation, perhaps even my ultimate favorite. I played through the game multiple times, as that was the point of it. The game had a group of friends in a huge ass cabin in the woods being stalked, but all was not what it seemed.
How to Download Until Dawn (2025 film)
Until Dawn was released on April 25, 2025. You can expect to be able to stream or download it from Netflix or other digital platfroms in a few months from this date. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
The video game of Until Dawn had a tremendous twist that I did not see coming at the time. It was also a game where, when people died, they died for real, and they were out for the rest of the game. Meaning that there were many ways that the story could go. Until Dawn got a remake in 2024 which I thought was kind of unnecessary, but that unnecessary remake was so much better than this movie.
Who Was the Until Dawn Movie Made For?
I wonder what the point of the Until Dawn movie was! I am not trying to be funny here. Who was this movie made for? It clearly was not made for people who are fans of the game, as it has pretty much zero to do with the game. On the flip side of that, if someone were to watch this movie on a whim and think it was cool and then want to play the game as a result of it, they would probably wonder why the hell the movie and the game had the same title!
Horror Movie Setup and Characters
Look, I love horror movies, if I had to pick a favorite genre, it would be horror. I knew going in that this movie was changing a ton of stuff from the game, but I thought the potential for a fun horror movie was still there. To be fair, the first quarter, perhaps even half of the movie is fun.
Plot Twists and Cabin Vibes
We have a group of friends, and one of them, Clover, has a sister who went missing, and she and her friends are trying to find out what happened to her. As an excuse to get a group of young people in a creepy house in the woods, it works. Also, I got a huge kick out of the way it was kind of like the awesome Cabin in the Woods when they were trying to get there, but here it was Peter Stormar doing the old creepy guy thing and what is awesome about that is that he was actually in the Until Dawn video game.
Horror Gimmick and Narrative Missteps
Once they arrive at the house, they start being killed in pretty gruesome ways, and this is fun stuff. I was having a good time at first, even though I was still wondering why the heck this was called Until Dawn! The “gimmick” is that once they all die, time is reset, and they have to try to survive “until dawn” again.
Weak Characters and Excessive Explanation
This could have been a fun horror movie to be fair, but about halfway through, something happens and they can no longer die as much as they want in their efforts to survive “until dawn”. As well as this, this is a movie that likes to overexplain everything to the audience, and it becomes super annoying. Speaking of annoying, I never clicked with any of these characters at all. In the game, we have a fantastic cast of interesting characters, some you like, some you hate, but you actually care in one way or another. Outside of Clover, off the top of my head, I could not tell you another character’s name from the movie.
Final Thoughts on Until Dawn as a Video Game Adaptation
While I have certainly seen way worse movies than Until Dawn and even worse video game adaptations, adaptation is the key word here. This feels nothing like the video game it is supposedly based on at all! As I said, I knew that they were changing things up for the movie, but I was shocked at just how much they changed; it’s like a completely different thing! Play the PS4 original or the PS5 remake instead of watching this. Perhaps give it a watch on streaming, but I would not make the effort to see this in the theatre!
