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A day after teasing video game fans of the new direction of its film adaptation of Supermassive Games’ 2015 break-out interactive horror drama, Sony has finally released the official trailer for Until Dawn.
In contrast with the game–which saw a group of friends meet back up at a McMansion in the dead of winter years after the death of two sisters in the friend group, duck a mysterious flame-thrower-wielding man and mysterious creatures in the night, and encounter totems that gave them insights into the future–director David F. Sandberg’s film sees a group of friends looking for a mysteriously disappeared sister.
While this aligns with the game’s premise, events take a turn reminiscent of Happy Death Day when an hourglass reverses time after the group’s brutal murders by a diverse array of horror creatures. Another twist to the film is that the group has a limited number of lives left to relive and, you guessed it, must survive until dawn. You can check out the trailer below.
Despite Sandberg and crew getting ahead of the trailer’s release to reiterate that the film is going to do its own thing like ditching the snowy mountain setting for a fall cabin in the woods look, the film does retain some hallmarks that made the game so iconic all these years later. Key among them is actor Peter Stormare reprising his role in the game and brief shots of the wendigos terrorizing the unfortunate group of youngsters. Said unfortunate group of youngers are all original characters though: Clover (Ella Rubin), Nina (Odessa A’Zion), Max (Michael Cimino), Megan (Ji-Young Yoo), Abel (Belmong Cameli), and Melanie (Mia Mitchell)
Beyond that, the film looks promising, with some of the effects of its body horror scares and its ensemble’s video gamey perturbed-ness to their unfortunate situation. If anything, its remixed premise promises some gnarly death montages for horror fans to get their fixings. Let’s hope that the movie isn’t Until Dawn in name only, and will reprise more game elements than some referential moments and cutscene callbacks.
Until Dawn releases in theaters on April 25.
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