Films based on video games are generally hit and miss. Unfortunately, more miss than hit. For every Mortal Kombat, you get a Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros, and Silent Hill. A 25% success rate seems a little high. Until Dawn is the latest of these films and it doesn’t reach the heights of these movies. Thankfully, it doesn’t reach the lows neither. It falls somewhere in the middle, with a few jumps, a little intrigue, and a whole lot of young adult angst.

Until Dawn follows the story of Clover (Ella Rubin, Anora), a young woman whose sister mysteriously vanished the year before. Clover doesn’t want to consider her sister dead however, and sets out with three friends to track her last steps. Unfortunately for them they fall into the same trap as she did at a strange hotel in the middle of nowhere. Each night they find themselves hunted by a different horror movie trope, and after their deaths they are resurrected to start the game anew.

At first glimpse Until Dawn feels similar to several horror films, but mostly it feels like a mish mash of 2011’s The Cabin In The Woods and 2017’s Happy Death Day. While it does have similarities to both films, it does thankfully go in its own direction. You really can’t overthink this film however, as the plot really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. You just need to sit back and enjoy it for what it is, if you are into that type of thing.

Like most campy, cheesy horror films, none of the characters really stand out. Sure, you cheer for them, but you don’t know much about them, nor do you care to know much about them. The acting is passable, and what you would expect from this type of film as well. One thing that could have made this film stronger, however, would have been to have let Peter Stormare be on screen a little more. As it is he hardly appears for 10 minutes, which isn’t enough screen time for a villain who doesn’t have much of a hand in the killings. It would also have been better to have had a wider variety of scary beasts. Because at times, it felt like the producers ran out of money and kept going back to the killer clowns instead of showing something a little more interesting.

Until Dawn isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a great one either. It does however feel like it’s the first of a series of similar style horror films coming soon, especially with new Final Destination, I know What You Did Last Summer and Scream movies coming out later this year. If this movie had come out a couple of months ago when nothing was playing at the theatres, Until Dawn might have been worth spending the money on, but now it’s just better to wait until it appears on Netflix or Amazon Prime to watch it.