Until Dawn Movie Review: Every Day Is A New Death

Until Dawn started out as a 2015 video game by the same name. The player’s goal was to see if they could keep all the characters alive, well, Until Dawn. Quick time events, a myriad of player choices, and some surprisingly tense sit still while a terrifying monster hovers over you moments made up the bulk of the gameplay. Over all it was more or less like playing a horror movie. I restarted so many times after killing off players I liked. Not all of you. And no, I didn’t keep everyone alive. Sacrifices must be made in the service of getting back to my life.

The movie has some similar concepts. A group of 5 friends of dubious teen to young adult age get trapped in a house and haunted by various specters. Every time they all die, the night starts over. They don’t get to live unless they make it until dawn. They end up in this predicament because one of our friends is looking for her missing sister. Surely this is nothing suspicious.

I had a blast at this movie. I played and liked the game, and the movie has some glorious moments of fan service. Notably a psychological evaluation of Josh, and a great hold your breath and don’t move moment that felt plucked from the game. They even get the actor who played Dr. Hill in the game, Peter Stomare, to play Dr. Hill in the movie. The moment he spoke in his creepy psychologist voice, I remembered him.

Until Dawn has a little something for every horror fan. There are serial killers, supernatural elements, crazed psychological manipulation, and just the right amount of humor. The cause of death scenes from one night had me burst into laughter. I love my horror with a little bit of comedy. (See Tucker and Dale vs Evil for my personal favorite comedic horror.) Until Dawn makes prolific use of jump scares, but keeps them pretty damn legit. Usually, if something pops out at you, you should run. Even when I knew what was coming, they got me a bunch of times. My theater was pretty full, so as is the way of 2025 I’d preorder tickets if you plan to see this one.

Spoiler free thoughts are over here, so if you stick around be warned. I’ll be discussing the plot point by point from now on. Come back later if you don’t want the movie, including the ending spoiled.

Until Dawn opens with a woman digging/dragging herself out of a cave followed by some impossible humanish monster. It snags her foot and pulls her back in what has become standard horror fare. She gets free and we see her hand break through the surface. She pulls herself out of the underground monster filled cave American Release of Descent Style and flops on the ground, relieved. It looks like light is just peeking over the horizon. But she sighs far too soon, and a clown masked killer swings down a sickle, of course, as she begs him, ‘Not again.’ Title scene.

We see a red jeep with 5 college age probably kids. We get a quick expo that they are headed to the last stop on their tour as they look for the missing sister of one. Clearly the girl we saw at the beginning. So far, they have been less than successful, but they brought along one psychic. So good thing. The friends don’t actually think she’s psychic, but hey TBD. Apparently, the ‘missing but totally dead’ girl busted out on her sister right after they lost their mother. She invited her along, but…

Megan (Ji-Young Yoo) the psychic, wants them to join hands and try to feel missing sister Melani’s (Maia Mitchell) energy. The group obliges. Reluctantly. And they almost get hit by a camper. Jump scare. This counts though, because getting hit by a car is deadly after all. Clover (Ella Rubin) remaining sister, is out. She heads into the gas station store.

Clover asks the attendant if he’s seen her sister. He hasn’t, but he surmises that she’s missing. And Clover didn’t say that. Suspicious, she asks why he thinks that and he says just so many people go missing in Glore Valley up the way. Ah, I’m guessing one more stop.

They head out to the valley of doom in the storm of the millennia. Shit is getting real. No one can see and they are arguing about pulling over when suddenly they enter a clearing. A circle around a welcome center, with no rain. Just storms all around, but not here. Okay, weird. Then there is absolutely no cell phone signal. Now I know this is an evil valley.

They head into the Welcome Center. Hmm. This is a horror illiterate bunch and it will only get more obvious. It’s spooky and uninhabited, plus the calendar says it is October 24th 1994. Yes, yes, nothing strange here. One wall displays missing posters; they lack useful information like names or contact numbers. Megan is really feeling something as our resident psychic. There’s even an odd old-fashioned sand hourglass on the wall. And yes, when you’ve consumed enough horror, that is immediately concerning.

Clover is still outside, and she thinks she sees her sister in the rain and heads into it. There is no damn way. Have some self preservation skills, girly. Max (Michael Cimino) comes out looking for her and pulls her out of the rain. He’s her ex and definitely is still into her. Nina (Odessa A’Zion) is inside, signing her name in the guest book. Only after this astoundingly ill-conceived act does she realize Melanie signed her name in this book too. A bunch of times. Her writing getting worse with each signature.

Oh look, that hour glass flipped. And now we are hearing some odd noises outside. They check them out to find that the car has driven itself into the ran and is revving menacingly at them. We are not going anywhere. Nin and Abe (Belmont Cameli) her boyfriend and the only semi-outsider of the group, watch the car. Megan, Max, and Clover search for a phone. Starting with the basement.

The basement is…odd. It’s like a normal first floor with windows that look outside and everything. And it’s totally impossible. They do find a phone and use it. I get Cabin in the Woods vibes. A choose your own death thing. I will be wrong.

Abe (Belmont Cameli) hears a noise and walks toward it. Then there’s a thump and Nina calls out and gets no response. She walks toward the noise and finds him in the poster room. Completely bisected. By a clown mask killer dude. She runs but… The basement crew sees this and makes absolutely all the noise running away to hide. Boss move team. Max swings a chair at our clown friend, pretty pointlessly, but I appreciate the effort, and gets got. The girls hide.

Clover grabs a knife as clowny opens the closet where Megan is. He bashes her head onto the floor as she begs Clover to do something. Which she does eventually, but far too late to help Megan. Maybe she was in shock. The knife does less than nothing and she runs. Again, she thinks she sees her sister but then gets insta stabbed.

And zoom back to the moment Nina signed the guest book. I’m blaming her. Abe sees that they all have missing posters now, too. They get ready to fight off the killer, but Megan says nope guys. Tonight is different. The lights flash. That’s new. Megan says tonight is worse. Ooof. She is looking really unwell.

The front door is opening and closing on its own. Things are looking supernatural today. They jam it closed, but Megan’s looking even worse. Her body is contouring and she screams. The lights go and she vanishes. They find her floating above the ground in the missing poster room, speaking for the pictures. She tells them, don’t let it in. Her neck snaps and she falls to the ground. Cue knock at door.

The knocker sounds like Melanie but again, be smart folks. Clover can’t do it and opens the door. No one is there. A new and very dilapidated house popped up across the street, though. Clover flings through there air by some invisible force and gets dragged toward the now open door across the street. Max is flung the other way back into the original Welcome Center. He tries to run after Clover, but the door is stuck shut behind him.

Abe is not about helping Clover. Nina kinda agrees. Max, however, is determined. Abe makes some snide comments and here begins his arc to be the most irritating character that can just be sacrificed to whatever eldritch god is in charge of this thing. Nina and Abe head for the car to get help. Max runs to the creepier house and attempts to get in.

Inside house number 2, Clover sees an ungodly number of masks. Almost an illegal number. But there is a TV for some entertainment. Some old lady is already watching it. Clover tries to talk to her but gets nothing. She’s like I’ll just leave now, but the door doesn’t budge. She turns around to see the old lady staring at her. Our new friend gives some good info, though. She says, “Survive the night or become part of it.” Good, some instructions. Of course, then she leaps onto Clover with heretofore unknown strength and forces her to breathe the oxygen. That surely isn’t oxygen, but probably demons. Clover’s possessed.

Now the door opens for Max.

Nina and Abe try to drive into the storm, only to find a skyscraper of a monster blocking them. They back up into the clearing where our favorite slasher waits. Abe is done for in seconds. No one really cares about him anymore. Nina is a little sad, maybe.

Max walks into the house but doesn’t notice one of the creepy masks is missing because he isn’t as observant as me. He hears noise upstairs and finds a rocking chair moving on its own. That’s the least of the issues with the room. There are dolls everywhere. The light fixtures are doll heads. Like, light pours out of their eyes. No freaking thank you. The chair starts up again and there is a clown doll now. Why are we still in this room? The doll lamps weren’t enough?

He picks up the clown and punts it for some baffling reason. Don’t touch it. Clover is behind him, in the mask, and she stabs him. As she runs out the door, the killer from earlier runs her over with a car. Yay! We can try this again.

No one notices the new water tower in the clearing. They should work on these things. They hole up in the bathroom with all the doors barred. Not a terrible idea, really. Abe turns on the water, which now works… it didn’t before, and even though it looks like runoff from a malfunctioning nuclear reactor, he drinks it. Everyone else does too. Disgusting. Can you say necrotizing fasciitis? They realize they need to make it until dawn now. I guess they figure bacteria is slower than that.

But not this kind! Abe coughs. And explodes. HE EXPLODES. Guys, I did not see this coming, and it was so freaking funny. Watch the movie for this scene alone. Then Nina, then Meg part by part because the movie hates her. Max explodes after Clover asks him to kill her so they can try again. Then Clover, after gas station attendant, shows up and we realize he is the mastermind of this whole thing.

Research time. Gas station guy is Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare). He was a trauma psychologist and was brought to the town to help the survivors of a horrible mine explosion that buried the town and killed 11. They find some tapes of his. The first one is porn. Which is helpful. But tape 2 shows a sanitarium in the worst possible condition where a man begs Dr. Hill to stop making him repeat nights and keep dying. All the trauma of this eventually turns the man into a wendigo.

They find a map of the town with the sanitarium on it and figure the Doc is there. He pops up on the radio and says he will meet just Clover and even let her see her sister if she comes to the woods. She agrees. I don’t think she understood the whole thing about turning into a monster if you don’t make it until dawn.

Everyone wants to rush after Clover but Abe. He really says that since she attempted suicide before, they should just let her have what she wants. (Did I mention he is a psych major??) Nina stabs him with a pickaxe. Freaking fairest reaction ever. She sends Max and Megan to look for Clover.

Clover steps into a bear trap and starts getting pulled into a cave. How many times, girl?

A wendigo finds Max and Megan, and while they run, it gets Megan. Max finds Clover, who somehow crawled out of the cave. It was for this shocking moment. The cave monster is a wendigo AND her sister!

They get free and run, but to save the others they have to start again, so Max stabs Clover in the throat and then drinks the explosion water.

When they wake up this time, they notice they are starting to change. And Clover was slow to wake. They speculate they’ve been there 4-5 nights. It’s actually been 13. They don’t notice that Megan isn’t there. Poor girl. They check outside and see a bunch of graves and houses that were for sure not there before. Oh, and now we look for Megan, but she’s not here.

They wonder what happened all the nights they forgot and conveniently, Abe has been recording a bunch of stuff and it survived. We see them all die so many times, in so many ways. It’s a fun and interesting way to do a montage. The last video shows Megan opening the doors to the same cave from the beginning and following Dr. Hill into them.

Sirens go off and all the monsters are coming. Time to hit the mines. Nowhere to go but abandoned dark tunnels. No one shuts the door behind them. God, that is horror 101. I’ve had enough of these rookie mistakes.

They eventually come to a house they have to walk through to move forward. Odd that it’s chilling all whole and stuff underground, but do not ask questions. They stop wait as they see the oxygen witch from before. A wendigo is not fooled and almost gets them. This noise attracts all the things and they run, eventually coming to a garage door and closing it behind them. Now we know about doors.

The clown killer busts through the ceiling, cutting Clover off from Abe, Nina, and Max. She heads on while they deal with this dude. Right into a room with her sister. Clover pleads for her to remember they’re sisters and just as I’m about to roll my eyes into my brain, Clover jumps onto her sister, killing her. It was all a trap.

The others have dispatched the clown killer with a sledgehammer, but more things are busting after them. No rest for the wicked. Clover ends up in a room with a traffic light, hiding from a Wendigo. Now I get they don’t have the best sight, so she stands incredible still while it hovers directly over her. What I don’t get is how it didn’t smell all that blood on her. She finally finds the hospital and Meg! Who is strapped to a chair in a room with a chained up wendigo. It can’t quite reach her, but she doesn’t have much time. Clover runs to find the key.

What she finds is the Doc’s office. Full of spy cameras and psychological profiles of her and of Josh from the game! He claims she manifested each type of monster, and this is all about her insecurities. It feels very victim blamey. Clover moves his coffee cup under some dripping water. He drinks it and explodes. That was satisfying. His self-important nonsense and lack of mental health awareness were making me itchy.

She frees Megan just in time, but now everyone is being chased by everything. We see a hand bust out into the sun from underground. Nice bookend from the beginning of the movie. Everyone gets dragged out and sprawls out on the floor. The sand in our hourglass runs out. GD it’s dawn! The rain stops.

They wait exactly no seconds before jumping in the car and peeling out.

We jump over to the security screens and see them switch to a winter cabin. See you at the sequel.

So what did you think? If you played the game, did it hit the mark? I had a lot of fun with this one and the incorporated game elements were a nice touch without being overwhelming to me.

Make sure to check out the Final Destination Plot Summaries too!