Director: David F. Sandberg
Starring: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young You, Belmont Cameli, Maria Mitchell, Peter Stormare
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 103 mins

Until Dawn is a film adaptation of the 2015 PlayStation video game, featuring its own standalone story that expands upon the game’s mythology. The film’s directed by David F. Sandberg, who returns to his horror genre roots after stepping up to superheroes with Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Sandberg originally made his name with the solid Lights Out but then really delivered the goods with the gleefully sadistic Annabelle: Creation, one of the highlights of The Conjuring Universe. While I really enjoyed it, his second Shazam! effort didn’t hit the mark from a critical and box office perspective, which perhaps explains his return to horror. The film’s written by Gary Dauberman, who also wrote Annabelle: Creation and went on to direct Annabelle Comes Home, and he rewrote Blair Butler’s original draft.

The film opens with five friends – Clover (Ella Rubin), her ex-boyfriend Max (Michael Cimino), her best friend Nina (Odessa A’zion) and accompanying boyfriend Abe (Belmont Cameli) and Max’s step sister Megan (Ji-young Yoo). They’re retracing the steps of Clover’s missing sister, Melanie, and when they stop at a petrol station, the station attendant Hill (Peter Stormare) reveals people tend to go missing around the the nearby mining town of Glore Valley. In typical silly horror fashion, the friends delve too deep into the mystery and wind up in a secluded area embedded within a time loop, where they have to avoid being killed by all manner of entities every night and survive until morning.

While there’s a couple of bright spots, Until Dawn is a real disappointment – especially when you consider a talent like Sandberg is behind the director’s chair. There’s a decent enough introduction and the film establishes the quintet, so you know who’s who and I had some semblance of care for the characters. It also has a reasonably high production design and I like that when the carnage ensues, there’s a clear effort to stick with practical effects wherever possible.

But that’s about it. Once the film reveals its hand, it’s just content to roll through every trope in the horror book and there are zero stakes. Character development also takes a backseat and by the time the third act rolls around, Until Dawn becomes quite tiresome. Not even Peter Stormare, who’s excellent whenever he shows up, can save it because he’s woefully underused. Also not helping proceedings is Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography – many of the shots are just too dark, murky and hard to make out. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is also lazy and not memorable in the slightest.

It’s a shame Until Dawn isn’t better than it is, especially considering the talent involved. While there’s flickers of promise here and there and you can see Sandberg’s tried to inject some personality, the film falls under its own weight. Until Dawn is easily Sandberg’s worst film and I don’t suspect this film will have much of a shelf life once it leaves the cinema.