Movie Review: 'Up to Dawn' is a flimsy branch of a great video game

Director: David F. Sandberg
Writer: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler
Stars: Ella Rubin, Odessa A'zion, Michael Cimino

Summary: A group of friends who are caught in a time loop in which mysterious enemies hunt and kill them in a cruel way must survive until dawn to escape him.

David F. Sandberg's adaptation of Supermassive Games' Until dawn Is only one adjustment in the name. Instead of bringing the interactive film of the same name directly to the screen in 2015, and creating its “butterfly effects” for cinematic conventions, Sandberg and the writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler create an original story in the world of the game. That would have been okay if the story had actively expanded mythology that Larry Fessen and Graham Reznick (in contrast to Sony, who did not attribute the authors of the game during the final loan, I give them their correct recognition) in the video game. However, it is decided to completely ignore all of this and instead to make a conventional timeline that fundamentally misunderstands the core mechanics of terror in the heart Until dawn.

The only concrete connection we have for video game is the appearance of Peter Stormare, who is his role as Dr. Alan J. Hill repeated and a group of teenagers catches in an endless time loop that forces her to experience her death again and again, unless they survive the evening until dawn and break the loops. This is about so far that I describe what happens, because with Sandberg's honor, the film has some nice connections to the game in this special story itself and how every death brings you closer to something that you don't want to become.

This means that the change in the “butterfly effect” meant that the players in the Pivotal turns could make critical decisions that would influence the story with time loop, the most important mistake that completely sunk this supernatural horror film. Of course it is complicated to make an interactive live action film, as illustrated by David Slade Black mirror: Bandersnatch, This makes it understandable for Sandberg to stay away from a large scale. However, if the film does not want to imagine how every choice the protagonists hit, the film will only influence a repeated series of exaggerated deaths with very little thrills and little to no concrete connections to really abrased fans of the game.

Sure, the use of sophisticated practical effects to visualize the most painful ending for our protagonists is certainly fun, especially a sequence in which you violently react to the water that you have drunk explosively. It certainly has the most creative use of blood I have seen since Coralie Fargeeat The substanceBut even the funniest – and unexpected – sections of the film are becoming more and more annoying when they are often repeated and the intended effect they had during the first use reduces. What is left is a number of random connections to the video game that seem to have been added at the last minute instead of being an essential part of its development.

Without giving away a lot, the integration of these elements is only there for the audience to show artificially and clap the screen when they recognize something they have heard of the video game. There is no concrete desire for Sandberg to really expand the myth of its creatures or in the effects of a “butterfly effect”. It is a time loop film that has Until dawn Connections in it. If you were eliminated as a whole, this would make no difference in the plot, and how the story was finally completed, and the core concept of fessing and Reznick's approach to horror in principle, not only in cinematic aesthetics, but also through its ludonarrative.

Throwing all of this out of the window, if you make a film made to dawn, seems to be as pointless as the idea of ​​making a film based on a film in which the subtle decisions that they make influenced the overall history. It also does not help that its ensemble line -up, which consists of burgeoning stars, cannot be held on the poor material that they have given, and often produced unintentional joy cases instead of lending them with the same emotional textures that the protagonists had in the video game. Even sequences with a significant dramatic performance are flat, as they contain more than one jump scares to keep the viewer on the edge instead of letting the drama speak for itself.

The end result is unfortunately for gamers who have spent their time to examine the tradition under the actual game, and the feeling that it does not have as much awe in front of the starting material as Jared Hess A Minecraft film. This is something I had never expected because Sandberg has a formal advantage over his contemporaries and he has great skills to make nice transitions, especially one at the top of his film. But Hess understood something that the Sandeng unfortunately does not do. If you make a video game adaptation, you would of course want to address a wide audience, but your main goals are the people who played it and have great appreciation for the game. For this reason Minecraft I did it so well – it was understood that it had to target especially for the gamers before everyone else. If you don't at the top of your Until dawn Film, for whom is the offshoot?

Class: D