With the recent announcement of the Until Dawn film adaptation, we’ve officially reached the point of film adaptations of video games that were already essentially playable movies from the jump. And given the gameplay of Until Dawn, director David F. Sandberg is going to have an array of both interesting and difficult decisions to make in order to pull off a successful adaptation.
Supermassive Games has often described its portfolio of choice-based narrative video games like Until Dawn and The Quarry as essentially putting players in the director’s seat of a horror film and allowing their decisions to shape the story. It’s no surprise in the current film environment that Until Dawn is getting the film adaptation treatment–video game adaptations, specifically genre games, are currently basking in audience fervor (see the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie and HBO’s The Last of Us). It can be argued that games recently adapted have lended themselves to the big screen treatment–the two previous examples are both lore heavy and extremely story driven. And while Until Dawn is obviously story driven as well, you can’t help but wonder how it can be pulled off effectively if, not only the game is already so similar to a movie in itself, but so much of the story comes down to player interactivity and choice?
There’s plenty of reasons why Until Dawn has become a cult classic since it was released nearly a decade ago. For starters, Supermassive took the unique route of casting major film talent–and each of their likeness–for its cast: Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere, and Peter Stormare are just a few members of the starpower that are featured in the game. The recognizable cast coupled with the gorgeous realistic graphics are pivotal in creating the film-like vibe of the game.
This poses one of the first unique challenges to video game adaptations that the Until Dawn film will have to overcome: landing a cast that can either match or surpass the bar that the stellar cast of the game has set. On one hand, they could see about enlisting at least some of the cast of the video game given the talent and how synonymous they’ve become with each character. But that could obviously become redundant–at that point, isn’t it essentially just the video game again? On the other hand, they have the opportunity to look towards younger stars that can bring new interpretations to each character and appeal to younger demographics who may have been too young to experience Until Dawn when it was first released.
This dilemma flags an important aspect to consider: should the film be catered towards Until Dawn loyalists, or instead appeal to wider audiences? Is there a golden path that appeals to both?
Another testament to Until Dawn’s lasting legacy is its handling of horror film inspiration–particularly slashers. The premise of the game has elements that appeal to another slasher fan: a group of tropey young adults equipped with campy one-liners, an isolated lodge in the woods, a man in a mask threatening the group with a voice-distorter…you can fill in the rest of the gaps. This is an element that heavily works to the film’s advantage: while slashers took a bit of a mainstream hiatus in the 2010s, the genre is more popular right now than it has been in decades. The task here will be for the filmmakers to heavily lean into that aspect of the game–be it in marketing, and how the film itself is presented.
This leads to the biggest challenge that the film will face: how to best reconcile with the exclusion of viewer interactivity that the video game has. The player interactivity in Until Dawn is the nucleus to the entire experience: your choices dictate character relationships, who gets injured or slaughtered, how deep you explore the nooks and crannies of the lore, and so much more. While frustrating at times, the quick-time actions and the “Don’t Move” sequences are effective at implementing an ever-present sense of dread and anxiety. And to tie it all together, the ending of the game brings catharsis to the entire experience because you see how everything that you’ve done has impacted what happens at the end of the night.
I can’t definitively say what the most effective substitute could be for player interactivity (I’m not sure this specific niche has been done before!), but I do believe there must be creative avenues that the film can take. Playing with sound and cinematography could invoke similar feelings of dread in the high-intensity chase scenes and “Don’t Move” sequences–perhaps more first-person point of view shots to make the audience feel more directly involved in the action similar to holding a controller. Making the characters act in more dynamic ways than their tropes could also be an interesting way of subverting expectations–this way, as an audience, your opinion of each character may often shift, similar to the shift that happens between the characters when you control the dialogue.
The topic of how the characters are adapted is also a hot topic and harkens back to one of my previous points: many Until Dawn fans have grown attached to the cast, and a decision will need to be made of whether the film will stick to what the fans know and love, or adapt if needed. With the announcement of the upcoming film, my TikTok feed has become inundated with things like fancams of each character, who they ship who with, and theories on who will survive in the film vs. who will die. How much will this really matter if the characters in the film are completely different than the characters fans already know and love in the game? It really highlights the seminal question that will always exist not just for video game adaptations, but adaptations as a whole: how far should you stray from the source material?
I’m excited about the film regardless of whether or not it totally nails the adaptation or completely flops. The video game is already a cinematic achievement, and in the event that the film doesn’t stick the landing, I know I’ll always have the video game to return to. And if the film is amazing, I love that more people that aren’t gamers will be able to love Until Dawn as much as I do.
Either way, as a gamer, I’m eager to see the discussions that are generated from the adaptation and what it means for the future.
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