Skip to main content

Hourglass Half Empty

The video game, Until Dawn is essentially an attempt to make the player feel like they are controlling a horror film. Wisely, this is not a direct adaptation of said game, as that would simply be a bland reflection of a reflection. Instead, writer Gary Dauberman and director David F.Sandberg flip the idea on its head, making a film that uses video game mechanics (the characters respawn after death, with a finite amount of lives) to tell its story. An interesting premise, and given both writer and director have done sterling work in the genre , hopes were high. Sadly, this is an underbaked effort that doesn't come any where near the best work either has done before.

Clover's is on a road trip with friends (including her clearly still into her ex-boyfriend). She is looking for her missing sister while her companions are hoping to help her move on. They soon end up at an isolated house that is miraculously untouched by the raging storm they are driving through. Come nightfall, a masked killer enters the house and promptly slaughters them all, only for them to be transported back to the previous evening. Clues around the house lead them to the conclusion they have around thirteen attempts to escape the deadly loop before something permanently nasty happens to them.

This is an enticing set up and as the first couple of nights play out and the party run into slashers, witches and water that makes you explode, it seems like we are in for a fun time. Unfortunately, the script runs out of ideas fairly quickly and we end up focusing on solving the underlying mystery. Explanation is often the undoing of a horror film (the more you know about something the less scary it is) so if your concept is also going to be your plot, you better have a killer reveal. Until Dawn does not. In fact, the explanation to what is going on is both over-explained to the point of tedium, and nonsensical, with a pointless attempt to tie events more directly to the game. There are the (fairly standard modern horror) themes of dealing with loss and mental health but the focus is on the idea of friends sticking together. Weak characters and cliche dialogue make this angle a struggle to get on board with. A one dimensional, vaguely dislikable cast is a staple of many a classic slasher films, but that's because we enjoy watching them get bumped off. If you want your audience to route for everyone making it through and invest in no man left behind camaraderie then you have to do a lot better than, "dying for real scares me, but not as much as living without my friends". None of the performances are strong enough to get past the level of cringe banter on display. 

The film does look pretty good, shooting on location has paid off and some of the kills are inventive and more gory than you might expect for a video game adaptation looking for mainstream appeal. It just doesn't make enough of its premise to overcome its shortcomings. The fact deaths aren't permanent means there isn't much tension but opens the door for creativity. If the script had kept up the pace of the first few nights we would be looking at an entertaining time but it runs out of steam (half the deaths are reduced to mobile phone clips) leaving us with only annoying characters and a stupid explanation.

Video game adaptations don't have a stellar track record but there have been some passable efforts over the last few years. This isn't one of them, although it can filed under forgettable rather than egregiously awful. 

5 people ganging up on the new guy out of 10



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Toxic Shock

  The Toxic Avenger ambles his way into theatres some two years after the film was first shown at festivals.  Strange that the movie had so much trouble finding a distributor given the presence of major names, relatively mainstream sensibilities (compared to the 80s original anyway) and the fact it's actually quite a bit of fun. Events take place in a fictional city inside a cartoonish, ultra-capitalist, crime-ridden caricature of 80s America, with locations called things like "Depressing Outskirts" and "Ye Olde Shithead District". Peter Dinklage is down on his luck janitor Winston Gooze, a widower with a step son who attempts to break into the headquarters of the mega-pharmaceutical company he works for when he discovers his gold level insurance doesn't cover treatment for his brain condition. Things go south and he is transformed into The Toxic Avenger, a mutated super human who sets about righting some wrongs in his crime ridden city. The film attempts t...

Love is a Battlefield

  The Roses is technically a remake of 1989 black comedy, "The War of the Roses", but sticks far less closely to the source novel than its predecessor, with director Jay Roach and writer Tony McNamara bringing a drier, more understated tone to the humour. Add in pitch-perfect performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in the central roles and you have a fantastically fun hundred-odd minutes. After briefly seeing disillusioned architect Theo (Cumberbatch) and ambitious chef Ivy (Colman) first meet, the film skips us forward a decade to the now-married pair having abandoned their native UK to live their dream life in America. Theo is on the verge of revealing his architectural masterpiece while Ivy is cooking outrageously elaborate cakes in her role as stay-at-home mum to their two children. A freak storm ends up flipping their lives around and Ivy's chef career hits the big time while Theo holds down the fort at home and resentments slowly accumulate over th...

Weightwatchers Extreme

The Cut is a boxing movie with (apart from a brief opening sequence) no boxing in it. Instead it focuses  on the equally brutal, but less visibly part of the sport, weight loss, as a former contender spirals into madness while trying to shed an insane amount of heft in order to secure a last minute return to the big time. Orlando Bloom is a boxer (he is never named during the film) who lost his one title shot and now runs a gym with his partner and trainer Caitlin (Catriona Balfe). He retains a reputation for being an exciting knockout specialist so when a title contender dies weeks before an upcoming Las Vegas showdown, scary promoter Donny (Gary Beadle) offers him the chance of a glamorous comeback. The catch? He needs to shed thirty two pounds (over two stone or fourteen kilos) in a week. Caitlin agrees to him giving it a go provided they do things by the book, but when traditional methods fail, John Turturro's Boz enters the equation and pushes Bloom way beyond the bounds of w...

Honey Doesn't

Honey Don't is the second film from the director/writer team-up of Ethan (one half of the brothers) Coen and his wife Tricia Cook. Like their previous effort, "Drive Away Dolls", it is wonderfully queer but lacks any of the sharpness and precise pacing that typifies a classic Coen brothers movie. Margaret Qualley is Honey O'Donahue (a name you will hear spoken a LOT over the course of the film), a private investigator in Bakersfield. She is essentially a classic noir gumshoe detective transported to sun-bleached, modern-day California. After a would-be-client dies, Honey begins an investigation that has her cross paths with Chris Evans's skeezy preacher and the mysterious French woman who represents his business partners. She is also attempting to provide support to her sister, who has a small army of children, including an eldest daughter who she is constantly at loggerheads with. All while working her way through the lesbian population of town, including embarki...

We are Living in a Material World

 Materialists is, on the surface, a romantic drama-comedy about a New York matchmaker who faces a choice in her own love life. It has something more on its mind though, presenting a forensic examination of modern adult relationships and the incompatibility of expectation and genuine feeling.  Dakota Johnson is Lucy, a specialist in matching together "elite" couples. For elite, read some of the worst people on Earth. Men who demand their partners have knockout bodies, adhere to strict weight limits and the younger the better. Women who will only consider the tall, rich and in one case, white. In Lucy's world marriage is a business deal and the ultimate match is the one who checks the most boxes. As a "voluntary celibate", she carries this philosophy into here every day life and has no interest in dating until she can find the rich man who will make husband material. The love cynic is a classic trope for the lead in a movie with this set up but there is much more...

Won't Somebody Think of the Children

  Weapons is the sophomore effort from writer/director Zach Craggier and while his first film, "Barbarian", was well received, this feels like a clear step up. The film's fantastically eerie marketing campaign revolved around the movies central mystery, at 2.17 AM an entire classrooms worth of sixth graders get up out of bed and disappear into the night. It's a great hook but the story proper actually picks up a couple of months after the event and unfolds over a couple of days as the townspeople continue to deal with the fallout. The point of view shifts between a bunch of characters and time and space is given to fleshing out the small town details. This approach, combined with the sombre and eventually horrific goings on, gives the story a very Stephen King feel. It also works as a tension release, wiping the slate somewhat clean every time we switch perspective. The slight downside to the condensed mini series approach is that it lengthens the film with some segm...

Money and Masks

The challenge for Dumb Money is how to make a story about stocks interesting, especially when anyone interested either already knows what happened or can easily look up the events. The answer given here is to focus on some great characters played by grade A actors.  The story is a simple one, albeit one seasoned with odd bit of financial jargon. Way back in pandemic times (2021) a low rung financial investor called Keith Gill led a Reddit driven movement to buy up stock in video game retail chain Gamestop, massively driving up its share price and giving investors a huge return. This sparks a backlash from the big finance institutions betting on the companies demise. Paul Dano plays Gill with Seth Rogan, Vincent D'Onofrio and Nick Offerman appearing as real life Wall Street investors alongside some made up "average Joe" characters portrayed by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos and others. When every character is introduced we see their net worth, from the multiple billions ...

I Got Bombs But I'm Not a Bomber

 Oppenheimer posed a tricky question for perennial hit maker Christopher Nolan. How do you make a three hour biopic of a scientist compelling enough to bring in big money? Turns out the answer is to not make a biopic at all. While J. Robert Oppenheimer is indeed the focus of the film it eschews any traditional biopic format, instead serving up what is essentially a heist or even sports movie wrapped up in a courtroom drama. This allows the director to indulge his favourite hobby of playing with time, as the story jumps between two different panel hearings  while also covering Oppenheimer's early career and of course the work of the Manhattan Project. This approach works incredibly well with the three hour runtime flying by. In fact, if you go to see this in the cinema you might want to skip the large cola as there really isn't any time when little enough is happening to sneak in a toilet brake.  Technically the film is outstanding. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, follo...

2023 at the Cinema

  Its the start of a new year which means it's time to put some movies in their place. This is not a definitive list of the best films of 2023, only things I saw in the cinema are eligible (sorry Killers of the Flower Moon) so if you're wondering why your favourite/most hated flick isn't on here it's because I didn't see it on the big screen. Also, I reserve the right to have a completely different opinion about any and all of the entries in a weeks time. 50. The Enforcer Tedious, no action "thriller" about a criminal debt collector and his trainee street tough. Not sure if this snoozefest began with aspirations of being a no nonsense Taken clone or a serious redemption story but a plot driven by coincidence, awful dialogue and a 99 cents aesthetic make it feel like something from the depths of Amazon Prime rather than a cinema release. No idea how they wrangled Antonio Banderas into appearing in such a damp squib. 49. Saw X  After attempting a detective m...

Dressed for Fun

The Naked Gun is a legacy sequel to the mad cap comedy franchise of the late 80's/ early 90's, with Liam Neeson playing Frank Drebin Jr, son of the legendary Leslie Neilson's detective from the original movies. Is big Liam quite as good at deadpan hilarity as Neilson was? Possibly not. Does this film ever completely match the highs of its predecessors? Probably not. Is it still very funny? Absolutely.  The film arrives amid a cinematic landscape devoid of out of and out comedies, with laughs mostly relegated to one liners in action films or the silly sidekick in a romcom. Fortunately, from the moment a Girl Scout peels off her face to reveal a gurning Neilson, right through to a joke filled credits roll, The Naked Gun is interested solely in making you chuckle. Sure, there is a plot, involving a mcguffin literally named PLOT device and an evil tech mogul, played with deliciously deadpan malice by Danny Huston, but it's all about the gags. The comedy runs the gamut from ...