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

Rooms Got Back

Backrooms was never likely to struggle financially. The last couple of years have taught us that if you can turn Gen Z out, box office success tends to follow. Given the viral subject matter (more on that later) a younger audience were always likely to show up in more than enough numbers to turn a profit on a moderately budgeted horror film. The question facing studio A24 and 20 year old (yes that's right, 20 year old) director Kane Parsons was what to do with the free hit. Do you double down on the premise in order to satiate the TikTok crowd? Or do you layer on the themes and character in order to create an "elevated" horror more in keeping with the A24 brand? It seems they were never quite able to commit to one approach or the other and the final product falls unsatisfyingly in between. For those unaware of the Backrooms phenomenon, it began life as a creepypasta, modern folklore where people share an unsettling picture online and create stories around it. The idea wi...

He-Management

A second Masters of the Universe movie (after the 1987 Dolph Lundgren vehicle) has been on the docket for a long time, with directors from John Woo to Jon M. Chu attached and rights bouncing around various studios. The success of Barbie (another Mattel property) is likely the reason this iteration of the project has finally made it to screens. While a look at what constitutes modern masculinity means it does share a little in common with its pink dappled cousin, it mostly just contents itself with being the most sincerely dumb summer blockbuster you can imagine. Nicholas Galitzine plays Adam, the Prince of Eternia, sent to Earth as a child to escape the skull-faced villain Skeletor (Jared Leto) who has conquered our hero's homeland. Fast forward fifteen years, and Adam is now a friendly Human Resources worker freaking out potential dates by telling them he is the long lost prince to a land of magic and wonder. Finally finding the "Sword of Power" he dropped on hi...

Welcome to Earth

Early on in Disclosure Day a character is told not to, under any circumstances, release the world changing information he has on the internet. For the masses to accept the truth, the reveal must be a carefully orchestrated, communal event. That's because this alien conspiracy thriller is a film about how important it is to tell a story the right way. There aren't many people more qualified to make such a statement than Steven Spielberg. Josh O'Connor plays Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who has stolen evidence of alien visitation from his employers and is trying to get it into the hands of his colleague, Coleman Domingo's Hugo so they can blow the doors off years of cover ups. Meanwhile, TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is finding she can speak multiple languages, including one that seems to be non-human, and finds herself compelled to find Daniel. Chasing after them is shady suit Noah Scanion (Colin Firth) and his security team. These event...

Thunderbolts and Lightning, Mental Health is Frightening*

Thunderbolts* takes a bunch of relatively minor MCU characters and scoops them up into a "Suicide Squad" type adventure where they face off against insurmountable odds. Given most of the characters have appeared in TV shows, there is a distinct whiff of Disney+ about proceedings but it is also one of the most solid films Marvel has put out in years. The execs must have known they had something decent on their hands as they waited until a whole weekend after release to spoil the end twist with marketing, as appose to doing it in the trailers. The titular Thunderbolts are : New Black Widow, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), failed Captain America replacement John Walker (Wyatt Russell), former Winter Soldier turned congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Russian super soldier and Yelena's adoptive father Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ant Man 2 alumni Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and maybe mysterious newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman). If you follow MCU events you will recognise ...

The Bourne IT

The set up for The Amateur is a well worn one, a man loses his wife in a terrorist attack and goes on a mission of revenge. The twist is, that while Rami Malek does play a man with a particular set of skills, they aren't the ones you would expect. Charlie Heller is a socially awkward CIA cryptographer with precisely zero fighting ability and no experience using firearms. He is though, a technological genious who invented half the agencies cyber security and can track and predict patterns like a computer. When his blatantly shady boss, played with smug glee by Holt Mccallany, refuses to act on Charlie's info about the killers he blackmails him for some training and the green light to pursue the perpetrators himself. The two main questions are, can the mild mannered tech guy thrive in the field and is this twist on the formulae enough to carry a fairly by the numbers espionage thriller? The answer to both is, pretty much, yes. Malek is tailor made for roles like this and it'...

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...

Its a Scary World Out There

Three movies into his career and it's clear that Ari Aster is a filmaking mad genius. Quite how much is genius and how much is madness is up for debate. Beau is Afraid, a three hour long, deliberately obtuse endurance test doesn't help answer that question. Main character Beau certainly flirts with madness. In therapy and suffering from some major mummy issues an impending trip to see said mother is the last thing his fragile psyche needs. After a disappearing suitcase and passport lead to him missing his plane the journey becomes an odyssey, reflecting the stages of life and all tinged with Beau's maternal issues. We see everything from Beau's point of view, bringing into question how much of the crazy world is real and how much is the interpretation of mind that is always afraid. Maybe the world outside his apartment really is a semi apocalyptic nightmare or maybe he just feels that way. Perhaps his mother has influence over everyone he meets or perhaps she doesn...

A Barbillion Bucks

Barbie, like The Lego Movie, is a product film based on a product so successful it doesn't need to sell said product and instead uses the guaranteed exposure to tell its own fairly unique story. Barbies of various type live in "Barbie Land" where every day is pink and perfect (for the Barbies at least) . When generic Barbie begins having thoughts about death and experiencing flat feet she has journey to the real world, accompanied by tag along, wannabe boyfriend Ken. Revealing much more of the story would be a bit of a spoiler given how well the marketing has kept the nitty gritty of precedings hidden but it's safe to say the ensuing story is possibly the most meta film ever made. It comments on Barbie's place in the world, some "interesting" missteps Matel has made with the doll, and the irony of the company having an all male board before you even get to the feminist and class culture stuff. Even the movie's casting is meta. Having Margot Robbie,...

There Can Only be One

Trailers for Him had Jordan Peele's name slapped all over them, which is understandable from a marketing point of view. In reality it is simply produced by the"Get Out" directors company, Monkeypaw Productions. It is actually directed by Justin Tipping, from a script he co-wrote with Skip Bronkie and Zak Akers. The prevalence of Peele's name in the advertising means the film is bound to draw unflattering comparisons with his own work, which is a shame as the film has its own merits. Cameron "Cam" Cade (Tyriq Withers) grew up idolising Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), star quarterback of the San Antonio Saviours. When White suffers a grisly injury during the Super Bowl, Cade's father tells the young fan that real men like his idol make sacrifices for greatness. Fast forward about a decade and a half and Cam is about to be drafted to the NFL, where he is tipped as a potential challenger to White's "Greatest Of All Time" status. When a mascot in ...

Big City Slashing

Scream 6 is a definite improvement over last years weak entry in the franchise. In fact Scream 2022 now feels like a modestly budgeted water tester, putting the stabers out to see if there was appetite for a proper sequel. Things start with a bang, the introduction being the most interesting flip on the standard opening kill to date and from there its clear there is a cleqr sense of ambition about preceedings. Relocating to New York gives everything a fresh feel and a sense of scope that the last entry lacked with the film making good use of the opportunity to see a Ghostface acting differently. Rather than lurk in the shadows the killer can now hide in plain site and this iteration of the stabby Munch fan has some great dialogue and physicality. They also deliver some of the most graphic slayings a Scream outing has seen. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega return as the Carpenter sisters and put in good performances even if the tension between them feels forced. There are issues...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog