‘Until Dawn' Reviews: Are Critics Creeped Out By Video Game Adaptation?

Forbes

24-04-2025

Ella Rubin in "Until Dawn."
Until Dawn — the movie adaptation of the hit horror-themed PlayStation Studios video game — is new in theaters. How are critics reacting to the movie?
Directed by Shazam! and Annabelle: Creation filmmaker David F. Sandberg, and written by Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman, Until Dawn plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday.
The official summary for Until Dawn reads, 'One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one … only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.
'Trapped in the valley, they're forced to relive the night again and again — only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.'
Rated R, Until Dawn also stars Michael Cimino, Odessa A'zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell and Peter Stormare.
As of Thursday, Until Dawn has received a 58% 'rotten' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 26 reviews. The RT Critics Consensus and Popcornmeter score, which is voted on by verified users of the site, are both pending.
William Bibbiani is among the top critics on RT who gives Until Dawn a 'fresh' review, writing in The Wrap, 'If you're just looking for reasons to jump out of your seat, there are worse ways to spend your time. And a lot of better ways too.'
Like Bibbiani, Alison Foreman of IndieWire has reservations about the video game-turn-movie but still gives it a 'fresh' review on RT, writing, 'Until Dawn makes countless gestures at being an incisive horror comedy — some good, some bad — but works better approached as a full-blown spoof. If that was the intent here, a better name might have been something like Video Game: The Horror Movie.'
Benjamin Lee of The Guardian also gives the film a 'fresh' review even though it doesn't scream greatness. In Lee's review on RT, Lee writes, 'On its own, lower-stakes terms, Until Dawn is a passable, if rather unfrightening frightener, made with some skill and enlivened by a strong troupe of young actors.'
Among the top critics on RT who give Until Dawn a 'rotten' review is Eric Piepenburg of The New York Times, who writes, 'Watching someone play a video game that they never let you play is a singular kind of boring. A similar 'Why am I here?' dullness arrives early and stays late in Until Dawn.'
Another detractor of Until Dawn is Jacob Oller of AV Club, who writes in his 'rotten' review on RT, 'A misbegotten time loop tale where the story shifts at will to cram in as many clichés as possible.'
Also giving Until Dawn a 'rotten' review on RT is Nick Schager, who writes in The Daily Beast that the movie 'lacks any sense of internal logic and is even lighter on surprising scares, dispensing only clichés that are as moldy as the haunted house in which his characters are confined.'
Until Dawn plays in Thursday previews and opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.