Until Dawn

Movie Review

What happens in Glore Valley, stays in Glore Valley. And its residents mean that very, very literally.

First off, most are killers. Or monsters. Or, most often, both. The guy with the mask and pickaxe? Oh, he’ll welcome you to town, all right; make a point of it, you might say. The witch in the creepy house will make sure you stay a spell. And let’s not forget the 40-foot monster lurking in the rain. You’ll be just dying to meet him.

Oh, and don’t drink the water, either.

Ever since the town was swallowed up by the earth in an unfortunate mining accident, Glore Valley has been the ultimate expression of the phrase tourist trap. Visitors don’t leave. They die.

And that’s not even the worst of it: They die again. And again. And again. As sojourners cycle through this truly interminable evening, they’re bound to meet pert near all of Glore Valley’s most committed residents, all of whom will, ahem, encourage them to stick around forever—getting murdered, dismembered and/or devoured until they all decide to stop trying to escape already and join the town’s ever-growing welcome committee.

Five road-tripping twentysomethings are Glore Valley’s latest guests. They’re in just the right frame of mind, too. One of them, Clover, organized this little vacation to retrace the steps of her missing sister, Melanie, gone now a full year. The rest, being Clover’s good friends and all, just thought they’d keep her company.

The trail ends in Glore Valley (of course). They all get stuck there overnight (of course). They all die horribly (of course), and they are surprised when they wake up to do it all again.

But Clover’s crew has heard from a townsperson or two that if they can just survive until dawn, they’ll be able to escape this endless dead-end cycle. They’ll be able to drive away—with all of their limbs, even—and plan more sensible vacations in the future.

Clover and her friends absolutely believe it. Because if you can’t trust homicidal monsters, who can you trust?

Positive Elements

In a flashback, we see Clover and her sis, Melanie, in comparatively happier times. Sure, they’re both mourning the death of their mother, but they clearly have a tight relationship. And it’s nice of Clover to search for/pay homage to her sister now.

Clover’s friends—well, most of them, anyway—care about Clover, too. And as the night(s) wear on, most of them seem to draw closer together. Sure, most would sure like to save their own skins, but they want to protect and save their friends, too. Their collective motto (for the most part) seems to be, “Leave no attractive twentysomething behind.”

That can come with some problems, of course: When it looks as if Character A might make it out alive, but Characters B and C are doomed, Character A will likely turn right around and, essentially, commit horror-movie suicide, in the hope that the next night they’ll all be able to escape. As they say (using more colorful language than we’ll use here), you get through problems by sticking together.

Spiritual Elements

As our five imperiled youth look for weapons, one of them—Max, Clover’s one-time boyfriend—says, “I think we need the Bible as a weapon.” Which, under the circumstances, seems like a good idea. But a Bible is never found, and it’s never discussed again.

The imperiled youth seem like they’re part of the “spiritual, not religious” crowd. Another member, Megan, professes to be something of a psychic. And before they enter into Glore Valley proper, she has them all stand in a circle and try to pick up psychic vibes—an effort to find Melanie alive, it seems. (When a gas station attendant asks if they were participating in a “prayer circle,” Clover tells him that yes, they were.) While the five ride in an SUV, Max says that they should perform a “ritual.” When another passenger says that she’s not prepared for a ritual, Max says he’s not looking for a spooky ritual, but more like a “closing ceremony.” Something to commemorate Melanie and move on.

Once in Glore Valley, Megan’s psychic powers feel more authentic. She picks up on the sinister powers hovering around the imperiled youth and, at one juncture points—like a dowsing stick might point to water—the location of the movie’s ultimate bad guy.

Oh, and she gets possessed one evening, too. Megan hovers about a foot off the ground, her eyes go black, and she channels the spirits of those who went missing in Glore Valley. Characters discuss the nature of possession, with Max—who may have had more of a faith-centric posture in earlier scripts—saying that faith usually protects someone from possession. (“I have a lot of faith,” someone quips, hoping to avoid Megan’s fate.)

We hear Glore Vally called “hell” or at least a veritable vestibule to the place a time or two. One of Glore Valley’s inhabitants is presumed to be a literal witch. We see monsters with supernatural underpinnings. (The wendigo is called out specifically.) And certainly, the whole time-loop conceit of the film would seem to suggest a supernatural space—even though the film makes a feint or two toward a more prosaic explanation.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Nina, a friend of Clover’s, brings her boyfriend, Abe, along for the road trip. Megan and Max joke about Nina’s constant need to be in a relationship. “Six months ago, there was another guy just like you,” Max tells Abe. And three months before that, Nina was apparently involved with a woman. (Max and Megan both reminisce about how much they liked Nina’s same-sex partner.)

While combing through some old VHS tapes, Max pops one in a machine that, judging by the sounds we hear, is porn. (We don’t see the screen at all, but Abe jokingly asks Max if he’d like a minute or two alone.)

Megan wears a top that bares a bit of midriff and bra, while Nina’s own top displays some cleavage. Melanie went missing in a breezy, thigh-high dress: We see quite a bit of leg when she appears on screen.

Max still carries a torch for Clover, and we see his love manifest itself in courageous and sometimes sacrificial ways.

Violent Content

If the imperiled youth feel as if they’re trapped in an endless time loop, you might feel a bit the same while reading this section.

People are stabbed, gutted, sliced and fricasseed. During the opening-night festivities, a Halloween-style serial killer cuts one person in half, stabs another through the skull (plucking out an eyeball) and dispatches the rest in equally gory detail. The killer uses knives, pickaxes and even a scythe when doing his nocturnal work, leading to a great deal of spilled gore.

But Until Dawn tries to vary the means by which it tortures and kills its characters, too. Someone gets caught in a bear trap (and has the trap snap back on the already injured leg an extra time or two). A speeding car claims a victim. Someone inhales what looks to be medicinal oxygen—but temporarily turns into a monster and kills one of her own friends with a pickaxe. (It’s not the only time that an imperiled youth kills one of their own.) A worm crawls into a hole in someone’s cheek, making for what we’d assume would be a messy end. An apparently possessed character has her neck snapped by unseen forces. A killer bashes someone’s head repeatedly into the ground until the victim is very bloody and quite dead. People get hacked and skewered and otherwise slaughtered in houses, cars and on nicely manicured lawns.

We must not forget about the explosions. Yes, several characters blow up, sending blood and gore and chunks of meat flying. Often, it’s mercifully quick (though accompanied at times by what feels like extreme discomfort for a few seconds beforehand.) But in one such death, the victim blows up a bit at a time: This unfortunate person first loses a leg (which rests on the floor as the victim keeps crawling). Then a hand. The character’s belly swells in a pantomime of pregnancy before it, too, bursts.

Our imperiled youth sometimes commit suicide, or ask to be killed, as well. One cuts a friend’s throat with a piece of glass, and we see the blood run out of the character’s neck. At another juncture, a character refuses to strangle his friend.

The movie doesn’t quite know what it wants its attackers to be. Are they immortal? Sometimes. In one scene, a character stabs his attacker repeatedly in the skull, wondering aloud why it doesn’t die. Another monster has a bear trap snapped on its face. But at other junctures—when the movie finds it convenient—the murderous creatures do succumb to their wounds. In a particularly gory sequence, a massive weight crushes the skull of an attacker, resulting in a mass of gore. Someone else dies via a stake. A third crumbles to dust.

And our imperiled youth are changing, too. Megan, especially, begins to pull out chunks of hair, accompanied by pieces of skin. And Abe lifts up his shirt, revealing curious knots on his back.

An old VHS tape depicts a man slowly turning into a monster over several days. His own deformations are pretty grotesque. And we watch as he pulls organs out of a dead man’s body and begins to eat them.

When characters are revived, they often come back with some telltale signs of their demise, such as bloody marks on their clothes. We learn that Clover had tried to kill herself twice before the movie’s events.

Crude or Profane Language

More than 50 f-words and nearly 30 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “d–n,” “h—” and “pr–k.” God’s name is misused three times, and Jesus’ name is abused twice.

Drug & Alcohol Content

None.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Abe coughs up what appear to be bits of phlegm and stomach lining. Megan rushes away from the camera twice to vomit.

Conclusion

By definition, slasher horror films are about death. The attraction is to see folks killed in horrific, often outlandish ways. Plot? Theme? Mere window dressing to the chasing, the screams, the blood.

But slashers come with their own built-in limits: Movies can only introduce so many doomed young adults in one sitting. Viewers don’t have the patience to digest a lot of backstory, and the movie itself just doesn’t have the time.

Until Dawn solves that problem by introducing us to just five people, and then killing them again and again.

Based on the PlayStation videogame of the same name, Until Dawn has not endeared itself to that title’s fans, with TheGamer calling it “Hollywood’s latest gaming insult.”

I’ve never played Until Dawn, so I can’t speak to that. But an insult? Yeah, Until Dawn qualifies.

The film certainly insults our intelligence, given that it never settles into what, exactly, is going on here. Is this about a haunted town? A mad scientist? Something diabolically supernatural? We don’t know, because the film sure doesn’t.

Until Dawn ultimately feels like just an excuse for the insult it does to our senses, with enough gratuitous gore and casual swearing to make many a thoughtful moviegoer squirm.

OK, I get it. Plugged In and slasher movies will never get along. The more an outlet such as this one might criticize a movie for its grotesqueries, the more a fan of the genre will take it as an exhortation to see the thing. Plugged In says, “Don’t see this trash,” which might prompt many a horror fan to run to the theater and queue up in line.

Still, it’s worth considering how this conclusion began. This film seems to assume that slasher movies come with a built-in weakness: They just can’t kill enough people satisfy the hardcore fan. The solution: Kill just five people … but kill them over and over again. The murders don’t have to be consistent with the story, because there is no story. They don’t have to follow a theme, because there is no theme. Death is the only answer. Death is the only reason.

Fans will get their fill of death here, to be sure. But the final insult for those fans? Until Dawn isn’t even that scary. Death itself becomes rather repetitive after a while, no matter what sort of bladed instrument is used or how far the blood flies.