Until Dawn film strays too far from the game’s story

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When I reviewed the horror game Until Dawn in 2015, it was my favorite game of the year. I wrote that it would go down as one of the “finest collaborations of Hollywood and gaming.” Sadly, I can’t say the same for the movie based on the game.

Until Dawn, the live-action film, is getting a theatrical release on April 25. I saw it in a preview in San Francisco courtesy of Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions. It is one of many games being turned into films this year, and it’s coming out right as we hit peak Hollywood and Games — a topic at our GamesBeat Summit 2025 event on May 19-20 in Los Angeles.

A Minecraft Movie from the rival Microsoft camp has generated $726 million in global box office receipts in just 19 days. And Sony’s The Last of Us Season 2 has put out two extraordinary episodes on HBO in the past couple of weeks. But I worry this Until Dawn film will be a step back, precisely because it’s not ambitious.

Until Dawn looks like it was filmed in a backlot.

From director/producer David F. Sandberg (Annabelle: Creation, Lights Out) and writer/producer Gary Dauberman (It, Annabelle series, The Nun series), Until Dawn is set in the same universe as the game, but features fresh characters in a new, original story.

One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.

Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the night again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn. It’s like Groundhog Day, the film, and it’s meant to replicate the experience people had playing the game over and over as they tried to enable eight teenagers to survive the night in a haunted house.

Only you can tell where there seem to have been drastic changes or budget cuts (Variety reported it cost $15 million to make). While Until Dawn takes place in a luxurious lodge on a mountain in the woods, the movie’s location is a decrepit Welcome Center building in a haunted valley that once housed a sanatorium. Instead of eight main characters among the young visitors, there are only five in this one.

Hayden Penetierre was one of star voice actors of Until Dawn.
Hayden Penetierre was one of star voice actors of Until Dawn, the game.

The standout voice actor stars of the game — Rami Malek and Hayden Panetierre, whose likenesses were very well done to match their real-life looks in the game — aren’t in the movie because the story in the movie is nothing like in the game. I get why the scriptwriters tried to do this. You don’t want to just have the movie replay the game. But this movie takes us into places that seem a bit ridiculous, like rain that is falling everywhere except on the house.

And we lose some excruciating game scenes like when Panetierre’s character has to stand extremely still.

There are glimmers of hope in the movie, like comic scenes where something really bloody happens — but I won’t spoil it. And some of the characters do a good job of deciphering the mystery of how they can survive Until Dawn. I hope this movie does well despite my criticisms as a fan for the sake of the PlayStation family. A Minecraft Movie, after all, got panned by critics and it’s loved by fans. But I am quite disappointed in the film myself. Instead, I highly recommend that you go back and play Until Dawn and try to get all the major characters to survive the night — using my tips and tricks from a decade ago.