Watching someone play a video game that they never let you play is a singular kind of boring. A similar “why am I here?” dullness arrives early and stays late in “Until Dawn,” the new supernatural slasher film based on the popular horror video game of the same name.
The game, about the eerie goings-on that happen after sisters go missing from a remote mountain resort, is played in a choose-your-own-adventure style. With interactivity off the table, the film relies on a traditional slasher formula: Clover (Ella Rubin) and a group of her friends make the terrible decision to visit a remote valley’s welcome center seeking answers about the strange disappearance of Clover’s sister.
Inside, a masked killer starts slaughtering the characters one by one. But here’s the “Happy Death Day”-style twist: Each night the characters’ lives, and deaths, get reset by an hourglass clock. It turns out there’s a deus ex machina madman at work in this uncanny valley, and as part of his diabolical project to learn more about the mechanics of fear, he reboots days and forces his victims to survive (they don’t) until (you guessed it) dawn.
The director, David F. Sandberg (“Annabelle: Creation”) does an exhausting job moving along a script, written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, that’s made slack by mediocre monsters, muddled time loop stuff and underdeveloped characters who seem straight out of a lesser “Goosebumps” episode. The spectacular and repulsively funny deaths by spontaneous combustion deserve their own, better movie.
Until Dawn
Rated R for face bashing, gut busting and exploding torso jump scares. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters.
