For those of you old enough to remember the 1990s, there was a trend in PC gaming during that decade which saw the rise of what was dubbed the “interactive movie.” It was a concept that had been brewing since at least the days of producer William Castle and “Mr. Sardonicus,” if not earlier but where Hollywood had tried and failed to put such an idea into movie theaters (see: the 1995 experiment “Mr. Payback”), the gaming industry made much better headway into combining the rich narrative and emotional experience of cinema with the personalization and immediacy of video games. Still, the format was inelegant; even watershed games like “Phantasmagoria” and “Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger” featured cutscenes with professional actors in-between moments of non-cinematic gameplay. In other words, the best “interactive movie” games were still just games with bits of movies interspersed throughout.
For my money, the dream of the interactive movie didn’t come to fruition until 2015, when Supermassive Games’ “Until Dawn” was released (and I’m not alone in that sentiment). The horror game, with a script written by indie horror veterans Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, follows a group of young adults who decide to party at a snowy lodge on the anniversary of their friends’ untimely demise, leading to classic slasher film shenanigans and, eventually, a supernatural twist. The game went on to become a best-seller, receive numerous accolades, and even get a remake that was released just last October. Now, the circle between game and movie closes even further, as the first trailer for “Until Dawn” the motion picture has just dropped. This doesn’t look to be a carbon copy of the video game, however; the movie is set in the same universe as the game, but apparently contains an original, standalone narrative. If the filmmakers have indeed done that which they set out to do, could “Until Dawn” do for the movie/video game crossover what the game did for the interactive movie, and deliver on the promise of a shared universe between mediums?
Until Dawn could become a major player in the horror world
Like Fessenden and Reznick on the video game, “Until Dawn” the movie has some horror vets behind it: screenwriter Gary Dauberman (most famous for much of “The Conjuring” universe scripts) and director David F. Sandberg, who’s returning to the genre after a dalliance in the DCEU with his “Shazam” duology. Similarly, just as the game featured some notable actors who’d already been established in genre projects (like Hayden Panettiere, Brett Dalton, and Rami Malek), this film has been cast with some up-and-coming young actors like Ella Rubin (“Anora”), Michael Cimino (“Annabelle Comes Home”), and Odessa A’zion (“Hellraiser” 2022). All of this, plus the film’s carrying the video game’s torch of trying to deliver an all-around homage to the horror genre, feels like “Until Dawn” could become a franchise that rivals “Scream” in its state-of-the-genre status.
What remains to be seen is what exactly an “Until Dawn” franchise looks like. This trailer gives us some clues, but many questions remain, chief among them just what is going on with Peter Stormare turning up as a totally different character than the one he portrayed in the game, Dr. Alan J. Hill? Given that the story of the game “Until Dawn” involves characters who are twins, could Stormare be playing a relative of HIll? Or is there a new supernatural twist afoot? Will “Until Dawn” become a horror anthology, attempting to include a variety of elements and subgenres in each new installment? Or, like “Scream,” will it remain centered on a “slasher-meets-creature-feature” premise? One thing is for sure: “Until Dawn” the movie will not have an interactive component, at least not one beyond screaming and yelling at the screen as per usual. Go ahead and tell the characters not to go downstairs, though — you never know, one day they just might hear you.
“Until Dawn” opens on April 25, 2025.
