Until Dawn Fans Are Not Happy With the Upcoming Film Adaptation

Until Dawn is one of gaming’s pivotal horror stories.It will soon be taken to the big screen in a major film adaptation by Sony, but not all fans are excited by what they’ve seen from the movie’s marketing so far.

Supermassive Games released Until Dawn in 2015, and it was quickly embraced by fans and critics. The game was inherently cinematic, using actors like Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek to fill out its cast of young adult characters who are stalked by an ominous presence while spending the night on a snowy Blackwood Mountain. The game notably used a choice-based system with a branching narrative that offered alternative endings and different death and survival options for each character. A film adaptation of Until Dawn was met with a hefty dose of excitement, but also apprehension from fans who questioned how the film would portray the game’s complex choice-based narrative.

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These questions have since been answered in the first two teasers for Until Dawn. The movie adaptation is directed by David F. Sandberg (Shazam!) and features a brand-new cast of characters including Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, and Maia Mitchell, plus Peter Stormare who is the only actor returning from the game. As revealed in the first look and teaser trailer for Until Dawn, the film will use similar ideas from the game, including the concept of a group of young adults being killed in various ways while they search for a missing friend. However, the movie adaptation also includes some major changes.

One notable difference is the time loop mechanic, which allows the characters to have up to thirteen deaths throughout the night, with each death resulting in the clock rewinding to the beginning of the night. Therefore, their task is to survive “until dawn”. In the game, the players cannot rewind time, which gives their choices weight and character deaths permanence. On top of this, Sandberg revealed that each reset will place the characters into a different genre of horror movie, allowing all manner of gruesome scares and kills to be incorporated into the film, which is another divergence from the game’s narrative.

While these are interesting mechanics for the Until Dawn film, they are quite different from what was presented in the game and many fans are not happy about that. Some of the more popular comments on the trailer on YouTube feature fans calling out the Until Dawn film for failing to faithfully adapt the game. “This is NOT Until Dawn, this is an escape room horror flick that just so happens to have the same name as Until Dawn,” one comment reads. “Until Dawn: in name only,” another said. Fans have a similar sentiment on Twitter, with one saying “Yeah I don’t think they understood what Until Dawn was about.”

The Until Dawn Movie’s Creative Gambles Could Still Pay Off

There are plenty of fans who are also supportive of the new take on Until Dawn, with the time loop horror genre-switch mechanic gaining praise for its creativity. In recent years, video game adaptations like The Last of Us have been embraced for their faithfulness to the source material. However, others like Fallout and Five Nights at Freddy’s have diverged slightly from the source and forged their paths with original stories. Until Dawn was always going to be a tricky game to adapt, but it’s possible that this unique path could still pay off in the end.

Until Dawn will be released in theaters on April 25, 2025.

Until Dawn (2025)

Release Date

April 23, 2025

Director

David F. Sandberg

Cast

Peter Stormare
, Ella Rubin
, Michael Cimino
, Ji-young Yoo
, Odessa A’zion
, Maia Mitchell
, Belmont Cameli

Character(s)

Dr. Alan J. Hill

Producers

Carter Swan
, Roy Lee
, Gary Dauberman
, Charles Miller
, Lotta Losten
, Asad Qizilbash

Writers

Gary Dauberman
, Blair Butler

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