Until Dawn (2025) by David F. Sandberg

Director: David F. Sandberg

Year: 2025

Country: USA/Hungary

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

Searching for their missing friend, a group ventures out to see what happened to her, which brings them to a special house in the countryside where the group is continuously killed over and over again, only to keep reappearing unharmed, forcing them to figure out what’s going on.

Review:

Overall, this was a decent enough if somewhat challenging genre effort. Among the better features of this one comes from the rather likable setup that provides a solid twist on the concept of the group being continuously targeted and tormented by the beings. This starts off promising enough with the search out into the middle of nowhere, with the series of bizarre supernatural occurrences coming together at the house where they continually get killed over and over, under the guise of a bizarre supernatural curse, which works incredibly well at establishing the need to get the group out into the wilderness and to the chosen location. As they explore the strange town and focus on the seemingly unnatural conditions that arise the longer they stay there, the eeriness and sense of unease that develops involving the mysterious disappearances, the abandoned state of everything, and the general sense of the area around them gradually reveals the work of the doctor holding them captive, providing this with a strong enough setup.

Once they realize they’re trapped, the series of strange occurrences that build up here brings about an even greater sense of atmospheric fun as the situation becomes somewhat clearer and obvious. The interactions with the strange beings keeping them in the strange center allows for a few solid moments where it’s hard to make out what’s going on, and once it becomes more obvious with the masked figure hunting them down and killing them in gruesome ways, the film picks up in both intensity and carnage as the solid stalking methods allows for a lot to like. Once they become aware of the repeated nature of the day by waking up in the same place with the memory of the previous night, it starts offering a series of intriguing attacks as the supernatural forces become far more vicious and aggressive with the encounters, focusing on the nature of these forces, creating a series of intense confrontations and supernatural-tinged action with some solid gore. These all come together for some positive points here.

There are some issues here that hold this one down. The main drawback on display is the sense of confusing material surrounding what’s going on, as there’s a lot of this one that takes a while to work through. The whole concept of why the group is being killed and restarting the night with the direct knowledge of what happened previously and have to go through the process all over again to make sure they can figure out how to stop it, which is the central premise of the film to begin with, is so convoluted and hard to make out that it becomes needlessly complicated to understand. The inclusion of this bizarre set of rules without much explanation, and the only thing resembling a plot is uncovered at the end, making everything until then incredibly difficult to understand what’s going on. The complexity of the setup here, involving who the new characters are supposed to be, what’s going on with the day restarting, and the rules about being killed, ends up being quite difficult to understand. Combined with the underwhelming and obviously bad CGI for a lot of the creature designs, there are some issues present here.

Overview: ****/5

A solid and likable enough feature with a few issues, there’s enough to like here that it comes off enjoyable enough, while only a few small issues present that are keeping this one down. Those with an appreciation for this mainstream style of genre fare or who are curious about it will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.