Exploring an abandoned visitor center, Clover and her friends encounter a masked killer who murders them one by one. However, when they mysteriously wake up at the beginning of the same night, they’re forced to relive the terror over and over again. A film by David F. Sandberg, starring Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, and Peter Stormare.
UNTIL DAWN
David F. Sandberg
(2025)
The film opens with Melanie (Maia Mitchell) clawing her way out of an underground pit, dirt falling around her as something pursues her from below. She scrambles to the surface, gasping and frantic, only to come face-to-face with a masked figure waiting above. She pleads desperately for her life. The masked figure raises his weapon. As it comes down toward Melanie, the screen cuts to black.
One year later, Melanie’s disappearance remains unsolved. Melanie’s sister Clover (Ella Rubin) embarks on a road trip with her closest friends, determined to retrace her sister’s final steps. Joining Clover are her best friend Nina (Odessa A’zion), her ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino), Max’s stepsister Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Nina’s boyfriend Abe (Belmont Cameli). Their destination is a remote gas station that appeared in the background of the last video message Clover received from her sister.
Inside the station, Clover buys a cup of coffee and approaches the weathered attendant, Hill (Peter Stormare). She asks if he was working there last year, and when he confirms he was, she pulls out a photo of Melanie and asks if he’s seen her. Hill studies the photo, then looks up and asks if Melanie has gone missing. Clover is taken aback as she hadn’t mentioned anything about a disappearance. With unsettling casualness, he tells her she’s not the first person to come asking about someone who’s disappeared. Hill mentions that people have a tendency to go missing around Glore Valley, a remote area further up from the gas station. Despite the ominous nature of his words, Clover feels a spark of hope. Finally, a potential lead on where Melanie might have gone.
With this new information, Clover leads the group toward Glore Valley. Halfway there, they hit heavy rainfall. Everyone gets nervous and wants to turn back, but they can’t find their way out. Eventually, they stumble upon Glore Valley’s visitor center. Something feels off as it’s the only building around. Strangely, the area around it is completely dry while rain pours down everywhere else, as if some invisible barrier is keeping the storm away.
Abe refuses to drive through the rainstorm and decides to wait it out. He, Nina, and Megan go into the visitor center, only to find it completely empty, as if no one has been there for years. On the second floor, Abe discovers a board filled with missing person posters hidden underneath what appears to be a regular bulletin board. One of the posters shows Melanie’s photo.
Flipping through the visitor center’s guestbook, Nina finds Melanie’s signature in it, proving she was there. Strangely, Melanie signed the guestbook 13 times, but her signature changes drastically toward the end, becoming barely readable. Meanwhile, Clover walks out into the rain after hearing someone call her name, believing it’s Melanie’s voice.
Nina notices a strange-looking hourglass in the main room that turns upside down by itself. Megan, Clover, and Max explore the visitor center’s basement and discover what appears to be an entire house underground. Upstairs, a masked assailant appears, killing Abe and Nina, then comes after the rest of the group one by one.
As the last person dies, the hourglass turns itself over again, resetting the night. The group wakes up with bruise marks on their bodies where they’d been attacked. Nina finds herself signing the guestbook for the second time. They’re horrified to discover their own missing person posters have mysteriously appeared on the board.
Eventually they figure out they’re trapped in a time loop and they have to survive the night to escape. But each night brings different challenges. They soon realize that dying takes something away from them each time, and no one has ever made it past the 13th night.
Directed by Swedish filmmaker David F. Sandberg from a screenplay by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, Until Dawn is a survival horror film inspired by the 2015 video game of the same name.
Until Dawn is a 2015 interactive drama survival horror game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony. Set on a remote mountain, the story follows eight young adults who reunite at a secluded ski lodge one year after the mysterious disappearance of two friends. What begins as a somber gathering quickly turns into a night of terror as the group is stalked by both a masked killer and supernatural creatures called Wendigos. Players control all eight characters, making decisions that shape the story and determine who survives until dawn. Every choice, from dialogue to quick actions, can have dramatic consequences.
While the film appears to be set in the same universe, it’s a standalone story with its own rules and mechanics. Time-loop slashers have made a comeback in recent years with films like HAPPY DEATH DAY and TOTALLY KILLER, but this film doesn’t bring anything new to the concept, especially since the time-loop element wasn’t even part of the original game.
The original game’s unique mechanic involves controlling eight different characters throughout the story, switching between them as the narrative unfolds. I know adapting this for the film would be challenging, but they could have at least come up with something more interesting than just making us watch a helpless group of teenagers get slaughtered in increasingly gruesome ways. What a waste of talented actors.
I was really disappointed by the Wendigo design. It was supposed to be a drastically disfigured, fearsome mutated human, but it just looked like a generic zombified person. I even thought they were going to turn into werewolves at some point.
By the time the film finally reveals the backstory of Glore Valley, I’d already stopped caring about the town, the characters, or their fates. Worse yet, it never even explains the masked assailant’s true identity or the Witch of Glore Valley. The whole thing feels like the screenwriters were making things up as they went, keep dropping plot threads and losing track of their own story.
UNTIL DAWN was theatrically released in the United States on 25 April 2025.
