When it was announced in October of last year that Until Dawn’s film adaptation would have an entirely new cast, I was disappointed, but not surprised. I wrote at the time that while the original Hollywood actors were a pull for the game, the initial ensemble would have to be replaced if the movie would be a straight adaptation of the game, since the actors have aged out of the roles by now. Not to mention Rami Malek would be significantly more expensive.
Until Dawn Isn’t About Until Dawn
Except now, it turns out, the film won’t feature the same characters or even the same story. As shared during a Sony presentation at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, the film has nearly nothing in common with the source material.
Actor Peter Stormare, who played Doctor Hill (essentially the narrator removed from the plot) in the original game and will feature in the film, told IGN, “The movie is going to be full of fresh characters and victims in a brand new story loaded with twists.” Apparently, the film is still a “love letter to horror” that “completely honours the spirit of the game”, and this choice was made to cater to both “longtime fans” and those “discovering it for the first time”.
Ashley Brucks, president of Sony’s film division, said the team is still trying to respect the source material. “In adapting Until Dawn, filmmaker David F Sandberg, who is a big fan of the widely acclaimed game, took the essence of what makes the game great and selected elements we think are the most important to the fans and paid homage to it in the right way,” she said. It’s unclear exactly what these elements are, but the premise is that the film is about “a group of friends who encounter a variety of terrifying threats”.
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What Makes This Until Dawn, Then?
This is far from an original premise. Until Dawn wasn’t the first to put a bunch of friends in the middle of a horrifying situation – just off the top of my head: Midsommar, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Final Destination, The Blackening, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Descent – and it sure won’t be the last. There’s even a movie already named after the idea of a cabin in the woods.
So, what else might we expect from the film? Perhaps it’ll be a sequel of sorts, one that refers to the events of the game but without actually being about them, though at that point, it shouldn’t really be called Until Dawn. Maybe it’ll have Stormare returning as Doctor Hill, tying the movie to the game on a more meta level, the same way The Curator ties all other the Supermassive games in The Dark Pictures Anthology together with his presence.
Or maybe – and this is a stretch, maybe even wishful thinking – the movie will somehow bring Until Dawn’s cascading decisions and multiple endings to cinemas. We could get different versions, with different endings depending on who survives, just like in the games. It’s been done before, with Across The Spider-Verse and Clue, so it’s not totally unprecedented, but it would probably be difficult to pull off considering just how different the endings might be. People might be disappointed to walk into a cinema and find they’ve been allotted the bad ending. It probably wouldn’t work out for the best, but it sure would be cool.
Either way, we’ll only know for sure if this is an Until Dawn movie in any spiritual sense or just a regular old horror movie when it hits cinemas in April. As always, I’m hoping for the best, but expecting something mediocre.
Until Dawn is a remake of the hit horror game for PS5 and PC, featuring updated visuals, lighting, and new content using the power of Unreal Engine 5. It follows five people stranded in a ski lodge, who find themselves hunted by a terrifying killer.