Live. Die. Repeat.
Directed by David F. Sandberg
Starring Ella Rubin, Odessa A’zion, Peter Stormare
Released April 25th, 2025
Rated R
Something that I like about the slasher horror movie sub-genre is that they usually feature a group of close friends that go through the ringer together. All of us would love to be a part of a tight-knit group of pals who would do anything for each other, right? That’s what we have in Until Dawn, where we are introduced to the wonderfully named Clover (Ella Rubin), her ex-boyfriend-but-still-friend Max (Michael Cimino), their pal Nina (Odessa A’zion) and her new bf Abe (Belmont Cameli). Rounding out the group is Megan (Ji-young Yoo), who claims to have low-level psychic prowess. Sure, whatever you say, Megan! The friends are on a sad road trip retracing the steps of Clover’s missing older sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell), so I imagine it was pretty tough to come up with a good road trip playlist for the journey. They probably went with a lot of Mazzy Star.
Our gang stops by a gas station, and of course, the gas station’s creepy old attendant tells them not to go down the road into Glore Valley, because that’s where people go missing. And of course, our gang will indeed go down the road anyway. I love when filmmakers lean into these famous horror movie clichés. You know you’re going to have the creepy old gas station attendant telling the kids where not to go, and you know the kids are going to go anyway. There’s something comforting seeing something so familiar play out. Soon our five players find themselves in an abandoned bed and breakfast that sports Melanie’s name hastily scrawled numerous times in a guestbook.
I don’t want to spoil what happens next, so I’ll just say they all die. They are horrifically killed one by one. Every single one of these people dies. The end. Then something weird happens. They each regain consciousness a few moments before their tragic, violent ends. Confusion reigns until they are murdered yet again! They are killed by all kinds of things. A masked axe murderer, an old crone, and creatures they call wendigos. Awakening from death over and again, they smartly conclude that they are stuck in a time loop and must figure out how to break out of it before they are killed for good.
Odessa A’zion was very good in 2022’s Hellraiser, and she gives the standout performance here as Nina, the most street-smart of the group. It’s worth pointing out that the three ladies, Nina, Megan and Clover, are really the protagonists here. They’re capable women, they make smart decisions, they’ve got most of the dialogue. Their companions Abe and Max are just there to be attractive cannon fodder. I had a blast watching this movie. It has characters easy to root for, some funny dialogue, and thanks to cinematographer Maxim Alexander, the film’s glossy sheen has a dark beauty. I appreciate that the night scenes are lit well enough so that you can tell what the heck is going on. I really enjoyed the ultra-creepy music throughout, courtesy Benjamin Wallfisch, providing one of the better scores of his career.
What keeps Until Dawn fun is how the movie doesn’t hold back on blood and gore. After making chilling but bloodless movies in the Conjuring universe, it’s great to see director David F. Sandberg and screenwriter Gary Dauberman go full tilt here and give us exploding heads. Dauberman co-wrote the script with Blair Butler, whom I remember from her time working for G4, the defunct television network devoted to video games. When you watch the end credits of the film, you’ll see photographs of Sandberg, Dauberman, Butler, the cast and some of the crew presented as MISSING posters.
Until Dawn serves as a prequel to the decade-old video game of the same name, which featured performance capture from notable actors such as Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, and Peter Stormare, who reprises his villainous role here. If you did not play that game, don’t worry about it, you don’t have to know anything about it to enjoy Until Dawn. And I think you will enjoy it if you want to see a horror film that pays homage to other films in the genre, and if you want to see a few human bodies explode.