I think I may end up giving up on trying to find a good horror movie as this makes 3 in a row with only one of them being somewhat good. The somewhat good film was called Good Boy and I will write more about that later.
After Dawn the title of the notion of the film to be somewhat familiar because it is a pretty popular video game in both this one title and the many other games that are like them. I played Until Dawn and though that this would mean that because of this I would know how this movie turns out. Well, that was incorrect as this movie does not follow the game's plot at all and perhaps this was due to them not being able to afford Rami Malek or perhaps just wanting to avoid what might have been rather expensive CGI that would accompany the other-worldly creatures that were featured in the game.
This film is similar to the game in some ways but the main one being that it has a group of rather "attractive" teens that are going somewhere for some reason and end up getting trapped there. In the game their destination is some sort of ultra-luxurious mountain lodge that is on top of Blackwood Mountain but in the film they end up in another fictional place called Glore Valley.
They arrive at a welcome center in the middle of nowhere and even though things are pretty darn strange in all the events that lead up to them arriving there, including that once they do arrive that they are the only people there and nobody is inside of the unlocked welcome center, they don't really see any issue with this and of course, just as one would do as a teenager in a horror movie, they decide to stick around.
What ends up happening is kind of abrupt and will surprise anyone who has never played the game as well as those that have because all of them are rather rapidly killed and I suppose I can applaud this because I didn't see that coming. But then they all wake back up and the night starts again and they have to try to survive the various things things that are hunting them.
The CGI is actually pretty good and the actors are not terrible either. The jump-scares are genuinely well-done for the most part and some of the dream chase scenes I would say are really artistic and well-done.
Although it does remain a bit unclear as to what the objective is even after the architect of this strange trap attempts to explain it, they do eventually figure out how to get free from the Groundhog Day from Hell.
So it seems as though I am praising it and honestly, it does have a lot of things going for it. So why do I say that the film is "frustratingly terrible?"
The dialogue is some of the worst I have ever seen in films
I don't know how a lot of people manage to maintain jobs in the script-writing world honestly, because it seems to me as though more than 50% of film that are released have dialogue that appear as though it was written by someone as a group project for a freshman-level drama class.
The dialogue in this is just absolutely retarded, with the 5 of them constantly getting in time-wasting arguments about whether or not they should stick together or split up (we definitely know they are going to split up because this is a horror film) and as soon as one of them gets slightly out of sight another one of them starts to call out their name over and over, shouting for them even though they are being stalked at that particular point in time by creatures that will be drawn to their shouty-ass location.
The idea of being magically captured in a "groundhog day" sort of maniacal trap is a magically crazy one already, but I didn't like the fact that the whole idea is that it is a game of sorts that they have to try to figure out yet certain ways in which they are dispatched involves their bodies getting possessed or taken over by some sort of force power and to me this is rather stupid. The things that are hunting them each night want to catch them, so why not just use the possession powers every time.
Outside of Evil Dead I have found any sort of powers that take over a person's body completely to be overpowered and just plain silly in horror films.
Overall, if they had just completely reworked the dialogue so that it wasn't so damn awful and absurd -perhaps it was meant to be funny - that this could have actually be a pretty decent film. But because of the horrible dialogue I found myself getting a bit upset anytime that any of the actors said anything at all. They do not help or compliment one another in any way, each of them is simply a hindrance on the progression of the group somehow.
Should I watch it ?
While this movie did relatively well financially speaking which means we are likely going to get many more of them from the studio that made the game, it failed to get any real praise from both professional critics and regular users. It sits at a 5/10 on all the major sites and honestly, that is where it belongs. I commend their efforts for being able to make such a good-looking film for a mere $15 million, but maybe if you do make another one, spend more than $3.95 on the script-writers. The dialogue is too serious to be intentional comedy and too stupid to be intentionally dark and dramatic. It's just there, and its there to fill up time I guess since virtually none of it is inspired or moving of the story in any way.
To me this was enough to frustrate me out of enjoying almost any of it.
On the other hand it is a visual spectacle and a concept that shows a lot of promise should they try to have another go at the idea. It could be a real winner if put into different hands on the second go round, like a new Final Destination sort of series.
It really is amazing that dialogue can be so bad that is actually ruins the rest of the otherwise pretty nicely made film but that is the case with this one.
Currently the legal ways to watch this film include streaming with a basic Netflix account or renting it on Amazon, AppleTV+ and Fandango
