This Feb. 2 marks the 12th anniversary of the disappearance of twins Hannah and Beth Washington (Ella Lentini), who left the safety of their lodge and headed out into a snowstorm, never to be seen again.
This dreadful tragedy sparks the events of “Until Dawn,” a horror survival game by Supermassive that allows players to change the course of the game by use of the butterfly effect — a theory that states a tiny butterfly flapping its wings today may lead to a devastating hurricane tomorrow.
The video game follows a group of friends who meet on the anniversary of their friends’ disappearance, only to be hunted by a mysterious figure in true horror movie fashion.
While the movie adaptation has a similar plotline, in which Clover (Ella Rubin) gathers her friends to go search for her missing sister, that’s where the similarities end. The characters find themselves in a “death loop,” and while that is an interesting premise, it’s obviously not “Until Dawn.”
The game serves as an interactive slasher movie, using a lodge deep within the Rocky Mountains and stereotypical horror movie archetypes such as a dumb blonde and a meathead jock to achieve this. While these characters may seem one-dimensional on paper, in the game they are anything but.
In contrast to the movie, where the main setting is a suburban house on a rural road, the film’s atmosphere just doesn’t deliver. Despite impressive performances from up-and-coming actors, such as Ji-young Yoo, whose performance as Megan has been praised by numerous critics, 103 minutes isn’t enough to get a viewer invested, especially compared to the game’s impressive eight hour runtime.
Given that their original characters are an exaggerated version of “The Breakfast Club” tropes, writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick did a fantastic job in allowing nuanced qualities in their characters, as they thought games can use moments for characters to express their inner feelings. This is especially prevalent thanks to the “choose your own adventure” aspect, which lets players shape the characters’ thoughts and actions.
While the game’s characters come across as morally ambiguous, there’s only one character who fully comes across as good. Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare) appears in the game to question the character’s choices, and even attempts to stop the horrific events about to transpire. But with Stormare being the only cast member from the game who returned to the big screen, the film developers decided to make him evil to shape their story, and his motivations hardly make sense.
“Until Dawn” is unique for its use of two separate villains, working without conjunction of the other. The most prominent of these villains throughout the game is the Wendigo, a mythical being in Native American folklore that possesses human beings who submit to cannibalism.
While the Wendigo is present in the film, it is, like Dr. Hill, mischaracterized, taking on a more zombie-like appearance. In the game, wendigos have impenetrable skin, crawl around on walls, are extremely fast and see based on movement alone. In the movie, they can be impaled and get around by shuffling. Most notably, however, is the divergence of the lore.
Despite the game following the Algonquin legend, practically building their whole plot around it, the movie comes up with a new origin story for them, and their version of Dr. Hill uses the wendigos to experiment on subjects and turn them into one, despite the bite being uninfectious in the game.
Many have theorized that the movie was initially intended to be a standalone by a different name, but in an effort to attract more viewers, they quickly rewrote the ending to fit into the game’s lore. This becomes further emphasized if you ignore the third act. Throughout the movie, numerous hints are made to werewolves, only for the Wendigo to be the deadly creature they face.
Besides Dr. Hill, only a few references are made to the game, such as a picture of Josh Washington (Rami Malek) and Hill’s ID card for Blackwood Sanatorium, a prominent location in the video game. With this last ditch attempt as a tie in, it’s obvious the film developers didn’t do their research. The ID card states the sanatorium is in Pennsylvania … despite the game taking place in Canada.
Many fans of the game have expressed disappointment with the movie for not taking details, however small or large, into account. One theory is that the movie serves as a prequel to the game (thanks to an end credit scene) or that the entire movie was taking place in Clover’s head, calling back to a chapter in the game as well as Dr. Hill’s statement that the house feeds off of fears.
The film developers would have met a better reaction if they released this movie as its own separate entity, or followed the original source content more clearly and had fun with it. The butterfly effect could easily be utilized, with different endings being filmed and released in different theaters, similar to “Clue.” Die-hard fans would probably be willing to buy multiple tickets to see each version, and with a perfect cast at their fingertips, this would-be box office influx shows just how much they missed the mark.
