The director David F. Sandberg is back in his comfort zone: a distant cabin in the woods filled with terrifying monsters. After managing two “Shazam!” Films, the “Extinction of fires” The filmmaker announced that he left superheroes behind and returned to the kind of horror, and with his latest film, “Till Dawn”, it is obvious that he is happy to be at home.
Like any good horror buff, Sandberg knows that the best examples only need a few well -faced elements: a group of young people, the aforementioned frightening cabin and, in this case, clowns. The Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman's script is based on a PlayStation game written by the filmmakers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, who was inspired by films like “Evil Dead” and “Poltergeist”. The cinematic adaptation is boasting of this “badly dead” influence in its context, its characters and its gore factor.
But “until dawn” is also influenced by postmodern and self-referential stuff like “The cabin in the woods” And “Happy Death Day” who play with form and expectations. He merges the horror tropes with the rules of video games (rehearsal, several lives), resulting in a film that makes a tribute to a genre, partly choosing your own adventure, an interactive haunted house.
A group of young adults Comely arrives in a strange “Bienvenue Center” while in the course of the weekend in search of Melanie (Maia Mitchell), the sister of Clover (Ella Rubin), who has disappeared for a year. The friends of Clover Max (Michael Cimino), Megan (Ji-Young Yoo) and Nina (Odessa A'zion) came for moral support, with Abe (Belmont Cameli), Nina's new boyfriend. The vibrations in a disturbing way are out of the graphics and things go very badly, very quickly for friends. But then, a hourglass turns and time goes up. The friends are alive, amazed and beaten – and they remember everything that has happened. What horrible could kill them in the next loop?
“Survive the night or be part of it,” whispers a Clover Crone during his second loop, and this is where the key to their survival resides. If they manage to avoid being killed until sunrise, they will go well (relatively). It's just that each loop brings new nightmares, unknown dangers and different predators, never allowing the group to get ahead of things. They must die and die again, in search of a way to get out of this time labyrinth. But how many chances do they have?
Sandberg, Dauberman and Butler work in a familiar sort of Groove Schlocky, offering well -used horror stereotypes that we have already seen too many times, before turning everything with wild surprises. We have already seen these players and the board of directors, but the filmmakers try to keep us on our toes with the way it takes place.
However, if you expect all of this to make sense in a real way, don't worry. Peter Stormare orbit the edges as an attendant at the frightening service station and / or a trauma psychologist, which has done research on this city where a devastating minion collapse has destroyed most of the population. He does a study on the transforming effects of fear, but that does not explain why zombie minors wear clown masks, nor the light on a certain number of supernatural idiosyncrasies. But “until dawn” has no sense to work. The universe of the film has its own specific set of rules in FERR and that's all that matters.
The structure of the loop gives us more time with these characters too. Although they all slip into known archetypes – the “last girl” of steel but vulnerable, the condescending jock, the sarcastic friend, the best best but intuitive – they are all fully formed, sardonic and self -aware characters. There are intestine struggles and conflicts that the nights wear out, and in a way everyone is right in their own way, but they remain united, unlike most groups of friends who find themselves in a forest filled with murderous entities.
Sandberg does not try to raise “up to dawn” above his horror roots of film B and he embraces good, evil and bloody with his return, referring to beloved films which gave the rhythm and established the iconography for something like that (he even nods with his head at his own work in some fun tributes). This will probably appeal to fans who appreciate reverence and twists and turns, but it is bloody so slightly fun for those who like this kind of good old-fashioned game in the woods.
Walsh is a film critic from the Tribune Information Service.
'Until dawn'
Class: R, for strong bloody violence of horror, gore and language throughout
Operating time: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Playing: In broad publication Friday April 25
