‘Until Dawn’ Featurette Reveals First Look at Highly Anticipated Adaptation

Another time loop movie, anyone? Sony Pictures has released a featurette containing first-look footage from the upcoming adaptation of the beloved horror video game Until Dawn. The video game focuses on a group of eight young adults as players make life or death decisions for them as they try to survive a night with a killer on Blackwood Mountain. However, like many other video game adaptations, the movie will not be adapting the original story but instead putting a new group of characters on the mountain with a different take on the butterfly effect decision-making that catapulted the game to fame.

The new clip shows off the talented team behind the new horror adaptation, as well as how the film is taking a unique approach to the world of Until Dawn. In the featurette, director David F. Sandberg — director of horror hits Lights Out and Annabelle Creation — and writer Gary Dauberman (co-writer of It and The Nun) reveal that the choose-your-own-adventure style story-telling of the video game will be represented by a sort of time loop that the characters are stuck in until, well, dawn.

Star-Studded Video Game Becomes Star-Studded Movie

According to director Sandberg, “one of the creative things the game did is that people make different choices and die in different ways. The movie has this mechanic, where things start over, and they get to try again. Every time they come back to life, it’s like they’re in a new horror genre. To survive, they have to make it until dawn.” And while the footage in the featurette is limited, Sony has announced that the full trailer will be coming soon. For now, fans can take a look at the new plot synopsis:

“One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening. Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.”

The original video game iteration of Until Dawn had a stellar cast, featuring Brett Dalton, Rami Malek, Galadriel Stineman, and Hayden Panettiere, so the movie adaptation cast already had big shoes to fill. Thankfully, the movie’s cast of new characters includes Ella Rubin of The Idea of You, Michael Cimino, Ji-young Yoo, and Odessa A’zion of Hulu’s Hellraiser.

While most of the cast are newcomers to the franchise, Peter Stormare, who has a long history in film, acting in acclaimed titles like Fargo, Armageddon, and John Wick 2, will be reprising his role in the original video game as Dr. Hill. With a talented cast and promising direction from a modern horror master like Sandberg, the Until Dawn adaptation is shaping up to be a hit horror film, just like its video game source material.