Until Dawn Review

“Up the road, there is a place, stuck in time” – Dr. Hill

The quote is a sentiment I often feel applies to my neighbourhood when people ask me for directions. I wonder where they ended up. Anyhow, that’s the kind of sentence that may well be cliché but it’s usually a good omen for horror film audiences, if not the hapless travellers who asked the question.

And speaking of horror film audiences, you could be forgiven for thinking that we, the Pierce Boys could, or should’ve sworn off movies based on video games by now. After all, not only do they tend not to review very well, but we devoted an entire episode of our Piercing the Veil podcast to trying to make sense of them and I still don’t know if we managed to answer THAT particular point. The episode in question is right here.

Up until my previous visit to the multiplex, I had no idea this film existed, wither as a movie or a videogame. Naturally Steve, my smartass offspring had already played the game. But the concept – or rather the snippets of the concept that I caught from the trailer hooked me in straight away. Add the fact that we could schedule it in as a double bill with The Accountant 2 and we’re off and cookin’.

If I were to pitch this to you very simply, I think I’d describe it as a cross of The Evil Dead, The Cabin in the Woods and Groundhog Day. The opening scene, as I mentioned above comes across as a cliché set up, but where it goes from there – wow. But before we even get to the opening scene, there’s a breathtaking shot of a red Jeep driving along a straight stretch of country road, with an hourglass surrounding it. It means something to the gamers, but to me it meant something else entirely – time was running out. This was my first indication that I didn’t have to have played the game to enjoy the hell out of the movie.

Now, that first scene – rural filling station. The red Jeep has pulled in, the occupants are a bunch of young people (naturally). Clover (Ella Rubin) is looking for any trace of her sister Melanie who disappeared in the area a year ago. (I’m not sure why it took her a year to start looking, though.) Her ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino) is there, Nina (Odessa A’zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo) and Abe (Belmont Cameli). The gas station attendant comes from the school of horror movie gas station attendants and warns them that just down the road, people go missing. But there’s no use in warning the headstrong, if there was – the horror industry would’ve died right at its beginning, after all if Jonathan Harker had heeded the Transylvanian peasants, he would never have met Count Dracula. It’s just gone on from there.

So, in time honoured tradition, off they go, heading to a mining town called Glore Valley – straight into a rainstorm that stops as quickly as it started. They literally drive out of a wall of water in a dry clearing, containing a visitor centre. The rain seems to only affect the surrounding area, nowhere else. Everything about the deserted place screams sinister, but there’s no telling these damn kids. (Seriously guys, has none of you ever seen a Friday the 13th movie?) The fact that on entering the visitor centre, they see a wall covered in posters of missing persons doesn’t even make them turn tail and run. (I would have done a 180 and been several miles away by now.) Seriously, there are several indications that something is seriously wrong here, including multiple signatures in the visitors register, with the signature becoming more illegible each time, the fact that there’s another building under the one they’re in, oh and the fact that they get slaughtered by a pickaxe wielding masked maniac.

Normally, that would be the end of the movie – right?

Nope this is just the beginning.

The travellers are caught in a time loop, and they find themselves back again, pre-death but remembering what happened. Oh, and there’s a spooky hourglass and skull display on the wall that just re-set itself. And this is the movie (and of course the source material game). They have to survive until dawn. But there are a variety of things here that will kill them on sight. There’s the Glore Witch, there’s a giant looming and stomping around, there’s the ever-present pick-axe wielder and there are the Wendigos. The Wendigos are particularly nasty. The travellers have only 13 attempts to survive a night. Should they fail, they become Wendigos and spend (I guess) eternity hunting down other lost victims trapped in Glore Valley.

That’s the quick version of the plot, containing nothing much more than you’ll see in the trailer.

The film is a stunning exercise in sustained tension, as the youngsters even have to resort to suicide to reset the clock and get a fresh start despite this taking them closer to their limit. The deaths themselves are enough to satisfy any gore fan, they certainly satisfied this particular one and his son. Especially the exploding bodies scene – that one is a spectacular splatter fest, showing off some really impressive effects work.

In fact, and let’s go full disclosure here, I enjoyed the film so much I’ve now bought the game and I’ll be immersing myself in it when I’m done writing this.

The score for the truly lousy, screwed up, tepid McD’s we had in between the films is a single, solitary 1. The score for this film, and for The Accountant 2, the other half of the double bill is higher than I would’ve thought. (And I’m hoping for a sequel.)

Rob Rating = 9