In 1943, Universal Pictures had the idea inspired to throw two of their monster characters in the same film, “Frankenstein met the man of the wolf”, thus making appearing twice as attractive and frightening as their previous entries. In the 1950s and 60s, a regular wave of repertoires from universal monster films and other horror films was announced with Lurid names like “Horror Show”, and were generally shown on double, triple or marathon invoices. In 1962, Bobby “Boris” Pickett released the song “Monster Mash”, an album of the Pop Rock novelty whose lyrics told the story of a party they attended by all the famous film monsters, and the song has become so popular that it is always a must of Halloween Kitsch to this day.

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As all this proves, there is a long tradition of quantity as a quality in horror cinema, a trope which looks at the more experiential and carnivals of the genre. Essentially, it is a capitalization on the idea that the more it is concerned with fear, and that a group of characters without distrust confronted with many threats is more exciting than one. Although it is hardly an unequivocal rule, it is undeniable that variety can be a welcome factor in horror films, and if it is well managed, the exponential threat factor that it brings can really increase the suspense rather than flatten it.

This month “Until dawn” is a rather clever example of this principle. It is a film that presents a rotary list of beasties, as well as the premise that the poor young trapped by their side are also stuck in a death and resurrection loop unless they can survive, well, until dawn. This last idea stems from the fact that the film is an adaptation of 2015 video game of the same nameAnd Rather than bringing back the plot of this game roughlyThe director David F. Sandberg and the writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler chose to offer a typical video game mechanism, where the characters can die, then live to try again several times. In doing so, the filmmakers made a film which, without being particularly deep, manages to be fresh, engaging, frightening and fun. For a horror film for the general public adapted from a game, it is a feat in itself, but what gives “up to dawn” is his meta, an existentialist touch on monster puree, making the film not the film bestBut the most Horror film of the year.

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In order to reach the monster monster puree as quickly as possible, “to Dawn” keeps its configuration quickly and well stored. In the tradition of many horror films (including the similar meta of Drew Goddard but much more thoughtful “Cabin in the woods”), the film sees a group of people vaguely university age in road trip in a distant and isolated valley. Instead of going there simply to have a rowdy party, the group assists in support of their friend Clover (Ella Rubin), while looking for her sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell), who disappeared in the region a year earlier. After a meeting with a mysterious and strange owner of the service station named Hill (played by Peter Stormare, whom fans of the game will recognize), the five friends venture deeper into the valley, discovering a violent thunderstorm which ends mysteriously just on the edge of a clearing which contains a house of “Bienvenue Center” for a small town.

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During certain groups that enter the house and the signing of the golden book, friends first found themselves attacked by a masked psycho with an ax. Once everyone succumbs to his blade, they discover that they were resurrected and transported earlier at night, only the psycho is now joined by a witch who seeks to own and kill them. Soon, he left the group that they became the last victims of a supernatural trial which cursed this land, a endurance test in which they have 13 attempts to survive all night. However, not only each attempt introduces a new threat to come after them, but it also brings them closer to a worse fate than death.

As we can see, “up to dawn” plays in a sandbox similar to that Previous movies in time loop Like “Groundhog Day”, “Edge of Tomorrow”, and especially “Happy Death Day”, the latter being a vision of the classic horror structure and classic tropes. “Edge of Tomorrow” and “Happy Death Day” are cited as intelligently bringing the video game strategy to the cinema, giving its protagonists the power to try to close their curls by learning models and playing a perfect game. Despite being an adaptation of video games, “up to Dawn” intelligently revises this concept, putting its protagonists in a nightmare loop where there are no diagrams to learn, where each repetition introduces an invisible threat so far, and where each resurrection means that the memories of the groups become softer. It is an intelligent and disturbing thing to take what initially seems to be a useful device and to make another obstacle for these poor children to try to survive.

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Of course, so many wild ideas and exposure moments filled in a 103 -minute film mean that something had to fall on the edge of the road, and in the case of “up to dawn”, this thing is the characters. Don’t get me wrong, all the actors are doing a good job here; Rubin permeates his latest daughter with the good quantities of strength and vulnerability, Belmont Cameli makes a great heel of comedy, and Ji-Young Yoo infused his moments of danger with a disturbing reality. It is not a film where you are likely to be confused as to who is who, because each character conforms to a type enough to stand out. However, you could forget their names (even if they constantly shout them), and you will certainly find it difficult to know a lot about them. Dauberman and Butler give some of the members of the group a semblance of a character arc, but all the people involved seems to realize that the real bread and the butter of the film are not the development of the character.

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This is part of the compromise with the Meta High Wire intrigue that the film makes. After all, if these characters were more anchored, they would probably lose their heads or babble constantly trying to rationalize everything that happens to them. The film cannot afford to waste time on such things, so if these people do not cry, then they explain what is happening next, etc. This aspect could make some people discover from the film, and nothing is done to save it. However, if you meet the film in its own words – and especially if you are used to the myriads of horror films in which the characters are thin – you will probably be dazzled by everything that happens, and find enough empathy to put you at least in the place of these victims for an hour and a half.

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The most winning aspect of “up to dawn” is that it is so clearly concerned about being a good experiential moment, essentially choosing to be a haunted house in the form of a film (something Sam Raimi once nicknamed a “spook-a-blast”). This is why Sandberg is the perfect man to blackmail the material; Since his beginnings with “Lights Out”, he has proven himself the type of gender filmmaker who is in love with the craftsmanship of all this, the kind of person who makes an additional effort to ensure that an effect works as best as possible, or that a little timing is perfect. Dauberman is also this type of old -fashioned schlocketeer, someone who wants to embrace horror kitsch without saying that it must be a pleasure devoid of meaning. There is just enough weight in “up to dawn” to keep it engaging without the procedure being carried out in high explorations of trauma and others, and it is impressive given the way in which the trauma is in fact a major plot.

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Sandberg, Dauberman and their distributed colleagues and crews clearly want to do anything more than to make a good horror show, and the creatures, the effects and the gags they have invented do this exactly. There is a particular moment in the film which is grotally daring, a gag Radio silence and “ready or not” to their own bloody game. Even if the film is based on the gag afterwards once too much, it is always powerful enough to help bring a little bit of the mind of Ballyhoo to horror. Heck, even the independent experience of last year “In a violent nature” has become more a subject of discussion for his scene of signing death that its deconstruction of the Slasher tropes. In horror, the staging will take you far enough, and “to dawn” has the Chutzpah and the plume to stand out from a year already loaded for the genre.

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Although the film is deliberately not rehearsing the intrigue of the video game, it absolutely adapts the implicit concept of the game to ask the player if he could really survive a horror film or not. “Until Dawn”, the film puts the questions to its viewers, and with so many various beasts to meet, the answers will vary for each person alone, not to mention several people. The variety of the film is the peanut butter of chocolate of this idea, never allowing the film to feel stuck in a single mode even if it establishes its own structure. To borrow a sentence from Bobby, “up to dawn” really feels as the Platonic ideal of a smash on the cemetery.

/ Film assessment: 8 out of 10

“Until Dawn” opens the rooms on April 25, 2025.