Just because the pain is real that you can’t laugh about it.
Photo: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Spoilers to come for the intrigue and the end of Up to dawn.
If you have never played the 2015 survival horror game Up to dawnCinematographic adaptation in 2025 could confuse you. In addition, if you have played the game, the film adaptation could confuse you. David F. Sandberg Up to dawn Borrows of its popular predecessor, but the script – writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler – tells an original story, and which is not always easy to understand. What starts as a classic Slasher configuration becomes something else, with a pile of ideas that threaten to collapse the film under its own weight. At the end, however, Up to dawn is saved by his sense of humor, turns out to be closer to Cabin in the woods than any more heavier number of recent titles. Even if it throws traditions on its audience, the film makes fun of the modern convention of serious horror and charged with metaphor. It is not because the trauma is real that you cannot laugh at it.
Before things disappear, however, Up to dawn feels very familiar. Clover (Ella Rubin), Max (Michael Cimino), Megan (Ji-Young Yoo), Nina (Odessa A’zion), and Nina’s boyfriend, Abel (Belmont Cameli), are traveling to explore the region where Clover Melanie’s sister (Maia Mitchell) was praised a year before. When an attendant of the service station (played by Peter Stormare, you know that it is not good) warns against Clover of disappearances linked to Glre Valley, a masked killer feels somewhat inevitable. Indeed, shortly after the friends found themselves to an abandoned reception center – filled with disturbing clues, like a board covered with leaflets of missing people, including one for Melanie – the inevitable psychopath makes an appearance. In a short time, it makes good use of the note of the film and dies brutally every five.
It may look like the end of Up to dawnBut this is only the beginning. With a twist of Marmot day – Or Happy death dayTo cite a more relevant example – the unlucky group discovers that once they are all killed, the night starts again. “I’m about sure we are fucked, guys,” observes Abel. A hourglass marks their progress; Unless there are survivors when time is exhausted, it turns around and begins another countdown. Unlike your typical temporal loop history, however, things do not remain the same. On the one hand, friends are each a little worse for wear and tear after their death, with marks where their fatal injuries were, as well as other signs that their bodies change. On the other hand, the threats of Glorre Valley extend far beyond a masked killer. As the five will soon discover it, there is an apparently endless range of things that want to kill them, witches and Wendigos with parasitic worms and a monster the size of kaiju in the woods.
It is a premise that could easily become monotonous, and there is certainly an imputée on the assault of Killed. Fortunately, there is also a lot of creativity in the Gore parade. Although a large part of the humor of the film comes from self-awareness of your characters, with many meta-comments throughout, the rest of the laughter is extracted from the pure absurdity of the violence that it inflicts them. In one of Up to dawnThe best sequences, the group discovers that they have recorded several of their most horrible arguments in mobile phone videos, which they watch together like a heartbreaking coil of clip. (Try not to think too much about the logic of the head of the vanity of the mobile phone. It is good advice for the film as a whole.) The most memorable deaths of the film arrive when the friends decide to wait for the night in the bathroom, with care with the sink water when they are thirsty. A few moments later, they each explode like water balloons filled with blood and viscera, a disorderly recall that nothing in Glorle Valley is safe.
To be fair, they also do what you are supposed to do in movies in time loop – or video games, since Up to dawnThe plot is clearly inspired by the survival game mechanisms. They investigate their environment to understand what keeps them there and how they can spend the night. It turns out that Glore Valley was a mining city until it was swallowed entirely, killing almost everyone, which explains bad vibrations if not repeated death. Finally, the group discovers that the service station’s attendant is in fact a shady psychiatrist named Dr. Alan Hill (Stormare resumes his role in the video game), and he seems to be at the origin of their suffering. In Hill’s past psychiatric work videos, they see him documenting a patient who believes that he is killed again and again by all his worst fears. He also changes not only to weaken “dying”, but becoming something more monstrous. This echoes a warning clover obtained from a witch who had it briefly (don’t worry): “Either you survive the night or are one of them.”
Those taken to the trap in GLORE VALLEY can only die so many times before turning into something inhuman – in particular a Wendigo, which is a reference to the Up to dawn Game, but again, don’t worry – which means the five friends must understand how to finish this. During their 13th and last night, Clover realizes that she needs a face to face with Hill. To reach it, she must travel through the underground tunnels which were once the city, fighting and beating her sister Wendigo before her arrival at the psychiatric hospital. Hill is too ready to exhibit the dumping ground because she arrived so far. He watched this group of friends on a closed circuit television because he studies fear. When traumatized people (like Clover) are brought to this traumatized location (a collapse of the mine will), their psyche creates monsters. It is Clover’s mind that makes the dirty work here: after the loss of the disappearance of his mother and Mélanie, Clover fought against depression and suicide attempts. Everything she and her friends have lived is real, but Clover and her trauma are the “engine” which feeds the endless range of bad guys.
The explanation is more than a little confused – as I said, logistics are not Up to dawnThe strong costume – but there is something refreshing in the film revealing itself to the horror of trauma And Not afraid to become silly with that. Innumerable horror films, especially in recent years, have given us metaphor monsters and heavy themes that prevail over fears. These films are not intended to increase tension; They are by the way What all this means. For his part, Up to dawn cares more about having a good time thanks to the unpacking of gender tropes, like its obvious predecessor, Cabin in the woods. In addition, the meta-horror approach helps to ensure that the great revolution “is a question of trauma” feels like a joke in itself. The film is not only satirizing the Slasher genre, but also the tendency of the horror of the 21st century towards feelings and the pathos expressly stated. How can we read Hill’s explanation that tap water that makes you explode is actually a manifestation of Clover’s self-destructive nature? The explosions themselves are played for laughter, just like the analysis of Psych 101 level. Is it so serious?
This does not mean that there is no sincerity Up to dawn. In the end, this East A film about overcoming it trauma, with a clove confronted with the loss of her sister head -on – yes, that means killing her in Wendigo form, but that counts – and discover her desire to live again. She moves Hill’s cup of coffee to make sure that a drop of water falls, and we all know what it means. Once the villain has exploded, Clover is able to find his friends, the five crawling out of the ground while the hourglass is exhausted. They are survivors, but therefore, in a way, it’s Hill. The film ends with him watching a new group of victims arriving at the reception center. Is there a deeper meaning here, a painful closing note to remind the public that the trauma continues? Maybe. It is more likely, however, that Up to dawn is just a fishing for a suite where the more attractive 20 years can be inventively killed. Really, what’s more healing more than that?
