Until Dawn

Look, I haven’t seen Until Dawn, but I have seen the trailer, glanced at a couple TikToks, and stared at the poster long enough to confidently declare: this movie is every horror movie, all at once, and none of it makes sense unless you’ve recently suffered a head injury or just love watching teenagers die in increasingly thematic ways.

Directed by David F. Sandberg, who usually deals in ghosts and possessed dolls, Until Dawn throws a haunted spaghetti of ideas at the wall—time loops, psychological trauma, wendigos, masked killers, cryptids, witches, probably some cursed taxidermy—and absolutely refuses to pick a lane. It’s like someone mashed up The Cabin in the Woods, Happy Death Day, and your ex’s therapy notes and said, “Yep, that’s cinema.”

Ella Rubin stars as a girl named Clover (yes, Clover, like a Disney Channel host turned final girl), who goes looking for her missing sister and instead finds a supernatural version of the DMV: long, confusing, and you leave feeling vaguely cursed. She brings along a crew of genre box-checkers, including a brooding dude with a guitar (Michael Cimino), a girl who vapes indoors (Odessa A’zion, obviously), and someone named Abe, which I think is short for “About To Die First.” Every time someone dies, the whole night resets. Groundhog Day, but make it horror. It’s basically a group project where Death is the professor and nobody studied.

Peter Stormare shows up as a therapist again, still trying to explain trauma using cryptic metaphors and unblinking eye contact. We get it, Peter. Emotions are scary. Can we go back to the cannibal monsters?

The monster design allegedly slaps—there’s talk of practical effects and original creatures, but I’m pretty sure I saw a sentient tree stump and a demon made of childhood regret. By the end, the film reportedly goes full Scooby-Doo-on-acid, pulling off masks and revealing that the real monster was metaphorical. Or trauma. Or puberty. It’s unclear.

Also, the entire internet is confused about whether this is a movie based on a video game, or a video game pretending to be a movie, or a really intense TikTok ARG. Spoiler: it’s not that deep. It’s just a horror movie that asked, “What if trauma had jump scares?”

Final thoughts: Until Dawn is either a misunderstood masterpiece or a cautionary tale about letting a Tumblr fanfic become a screenplay.

3 out of 5 cursed visitor centers, mostly for the vibes and the wendigo budget.

Did anyone else think this was going to be a prequel to Twilight? Just me? Cool.