By Shane Mead | Staff Writer
Throughout my life, I’ve never been super interested in the horror genre. It’s just felt so bland — a serial killer is on the loose, a ghost haunts a house or some monster terrifies a community. Then the threat is defeated, or it isn’t, and the concept is milked for a part two.
But when I watched the trailer for “Until Dawn,” it piqued my interest. It’s essentially a Groundhog Day-style horror film, in which the characters are locked in a haunted, abandoned mining town’s visitor center, repeatedly reliving the same night they can’t seem to survive.
The adaptation to the 2015 video game is intriguingly different and well-executed in some aspects, but the plot lost itself as the story unfolded, causing me to leave the theater wondering, “Why?”
Beware! Spoilers Ahead!
A group of five young adults set out on a road trip to retrace the footsteps of Clover’s older sister, Melanie, who went missing. Clover, played by Ella Rubin, had a video from Melanie, Maia Mitchell, recorded at a gas station which the group stops at, leading Clover to meet the clerk who tells her many people have gone missing in the nearest town, Glore Valley.
The group sets off to the abandoned mining town, eventually forced into its old and dusty visitor center due to heavy rain. Inside the house is a guest book; however, each signature repeats itself a handful of times. A room has a wall full of missing person posters, one of them being Melanie’s.
The group explores the center until things get weird. Abe, played by Belmont Cameli, sees his car turn on in the middle of the road, which freaks the group out. As they search the visitor center even deeper, they’re all brutally killed by a masked man with a pickaxe.
Then, the night restarts. Nina, played by Odessa A’zion, checks the book to see her signature is now doubled and the wall of missing person posters added five more: their group. The empty town outside of the visitor center begins to grow, with Clover being possessed and sucked into a creepy house in which an old lady tells her “survive the night, or become part of it.”
So that’s where the characters learn their mission. They need to survive the night, which is indicated by an hourglass that restarts every time their night restarts. The hourglass empties at dawn.
So far, so good. It seems as though each night presents some sort of new monster. First, the pickaxed man, who reappears every death or so and seems to be indestructible, as the characters can hardly leave a scratch on him. Then, the possessive ghost and the creepy old lady. After that, the characters start drinking tap water, which causes all of them to explode. It’s like each night presents a new challenge that allows them to learn what to do for future nights.
There’s a surplus of gore, considering the characters keep dying. Some stuff is pretty nasty, with their stomachs exploding or eyes getting gouged out, but nothing groundbreaking within the horror scene. This definitely isn’t a horror film that will keep you up at night, as none of the characters that are supposed to be scary live up to their potential.
After the first few nights, what I thought was supposed to be a “new night, new scare” theme quickly bores itself into becoming a zombie-chase-slash-sometimes-pickaxe-guy death, as the characters find out what is behind the repetitive nights: the gas station clerk, Dr. Hill, played by Peter Stormare. (Shoutout “Fargo!”)
Dr. Hill tells the characters over a radio signal that they can escape, but someone has to die. This causes the characters to keep going, as they don’t want to sacrifice anyone. As time goes by, and the characters reach the last night before becoming permanently part of this looping horror, Clover decides to find Dr. Hill and put a stop to everything.
But we find out literally nothing, and that’s my exact problem! The group watched old VHS tapes that showed them Glore Valley used to be a mining town until a massive explosion wiped out almost the entire population. Dr. Hill was then sent to Glore Valley to act as a therapist to the town’s survivors.
He begins taking studies on the survivors, noticing that after thirteen nights they become these zombie-like people with the intent of killing. Thus, the group now has to fight against these zombies in order to reach Dr. Hill.
After a lot of running and chasing, Clover reaches Dr. Hill’s office, where he tells her the things haunting the group are her own manifestations of the fear and anxiety that came with her mother’s death and sister’s disappearance. But when she asks if it’s all in her head, he tells her it isn’t.
So what exactly is the point of everything? I’m not really sure there is one. He’s conducting a study on the town survivors, and in order to do so, has to trap visitors in a constant loop that they must escape to survive? The pieces don’t exactly add up, and I’m quite bummed it turned out this way rather than the “new night, new scare” theme I was anticipating.
Not to mention, the cast’s performance wasn’t super strong. However, I don’t expect the strongest acting or writing from a horror film, so no harm, no foul. Of course, the main plot revolves around the group picking up clues that are supposed to help them escape, and I guess some do. But I wish there was a better answer to “why,” because this one wasn’t great.
Additionally, the group was doomed from the start, and only made it out alive because they were able to conveniently outrun the zombies long enough. Had they fallen just a second behind, they would have been stuck there forever. The seemingly indestructible pixaxe man was killed by the group in a brief, two-minute scene, leading to their eventual escape. (Why couldn’t they do that earlier?) It’s like the film had a direction and abandoned it.
The fact that this wasn’t exactly scary despite its purpose of being a horror film doesn’t really up its score, either. But hey, the concept was interesting and solidly executed in the first half. The second half just didn’t follow suit.
