Summary
Until Dawnis one of gaming’s pivotal horror stories.It will soon be taken to the big screen in a major film adaptation by Sony, but not all fans are excited by what they’ve seen from the movie’s marketing so far.
Supermassive Games releasedUntil Dawnin 2015, and it was quickly embraced by fans and critics. The game was inherently cinematic, using actors like Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek to fill out its cast of young adult characters who are stalked by an ominous presence while spending the night on a snowy Blackwood Mountain. The game notably used a choice-based system with a branching narrative that offered alternative endings and different death and survival options for each character. A film adaptation ofUntil Dawnwas met with a hefty dose of excitement, but also apprehension from fans who questioned how the film would portray the game’s complex choice-based narrative.
These questions have since been answered in thefirst two teasers forUntil Dawn.The movie adaptation is directed by David F. Sandberg (Shazam!) and features a brand-new cast of characters including Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, and Maia Mitchell, plus Peter Stormare who is the only actor returning from the game. As revealed in the first look and teaser trailer forUntil Dawn, the film will use similar ideas from the game, including the concept of a group of young adults being killed in various ways while they search for a missing friend. However, the movie adaptation also includes some major changes.
One notabledifference is the time loop mechanic, which allows the characters to have up to thirteen deaths throughout the night, with each death resulting in the clock rewinding to the beginning of the night. Therefore, their task is to survive “until dawn”. In the game, the players cannot rewind time, which gives their choices weight and character deaths permanence. On top of this, Sandberg revealed that each reset will place the characters into a different genre of horror movie, allowing all manner of gruesome scares and kills to be incorporated into the film, which is another divergence from the game’s narrative.
While these are interesting mechanics for theUntil Dawnfilm, they are quite different from what was presented in the game and many fans are not happy about that. Some of the more popular comments on the trailer onYouTubefeature fans calling out theUntil Dawnfilm for failing to faithfully adapt the game.“This is NOT Until Dawn, this is an escape room horror flick that just so happens to have the same name as Until Dawn,”one comment reads.“Until Dawn: in name only,”another said. Fans have a similar sentiment on Twitter, with one saying“Yeah I don’t think they understood what Until Dawn was about.”
The Until Dawn Movie’s Creative Gambles Could Still Pay Off
There are plenty of fans who are also supportive of the new take onUntil Dawn, with the time loop horror genre-switch mechanic gaining praise for its creativity. In recent years, videogame adaptations likeThe Last of Ushave been embraced for their faithfulness to the source material. However, others likeFalloutandFive Nights at Freddy’shave diverged slightly from the source and forged their paths with original stories.Until Dawnwas always going to be a tricky game to adapt, but it’s possible that this unique path could still pay off in the end.
