- Directed by: David F. Sandberg
- Written by: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler
- Stars: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3vBaINZ7w
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A group of friends get trapped in a time loop house of horrors. All they have to do to escape is survive Until Dawn. It’s a variation on the Groundhog Day time loop scenario with a video game vibe. The movie is pretty well made, but there wasn’t a lot here we haven’t seen before. We both thought it was on the tedious side. It was just okay overall.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a woman crawling through a tiny tunnel, and there’s something nasty behind her. The evil clown catches up to her and kills her. “I can’t take it again!” Credits roll.
Clover, Max, Nina, Megan, and Abe discuss what they are going to do for closure after they arrive. Clover’s sister, Melanie, went missing about a year ago, and they’re here to say goodbye.
Megan’s a bit of a psychic, and she leads them all in a little ritual that almost gets them all run over in the street. The man inside the gas station says a lot of people go missing in Glore Valley, just up the road.
After a very strange storm, they stop at a building that’s in the eye of the rainstorm, but that’s not really a thing. None of them have any cell signal, and the rain seems to be falling everywhere except where they are. The calendar inside the inn says it’s 1998. Abe finds a whole bulletin board full of “Missing” posters.
The sun goes down, and the weird sundial clock on the wall turns itself over. Abe’s car suddenly comes to life just outside the rain circle. One thing quickly leads to another, and the clown shows up, cutting Abe in half. Max soon gets a knife in the face as well. Megan gets face-planted repeatedly, but then Cover stands the clown in the back– to no effect. He kills her as well.
Time resets, and suddenly, everyone is alive again. They all remember what happened. Now their photos are on Missing posters as well. “It has hold of us now,” Megan says. As the hourglass continues to run down, Megan says it feels different this time. She’s apparently possessed by the former victims of the place. “Don’t let it in,” she says before she dies.
There’s a knock at the door, and Clover hears Melanie’s voice. There’s no one out there. Also, there’s an old house that wasn’t there before. Clover’s dragged into the old house, but the others are forced back into the house they’ve been in.
Clover looks around the strange house, and there’s an old woman there: the Glore Witch. “You either survive the night or become a part of it.” Max comes looking for her, but Abe and Nina jump in the car to drive away, which they soon learn is a bad idea. The others also die… again.
Megan’s losing hair and not looking so good this time around. They all have some minor health issues now– Abe starts coughing up teeth and explodes. Clover tells the others about what the witch said to her. Nina then explodes as well. Megan explodes just a little bit at a time until there’s nothing left. As Clover lays down, ready to try another round, the man from the gas station comes in. “You almost made it. Almost but not quite.”
Time resets again. Clover finds the ID for Dr. Hill, the man she talked to at the gas station. He was a doctor who was brought in a few years back when the whole town got swallowed in a mine disaster. They figure out that each time they’ve died, it’s been something different, just to keep them afraid.
Max finds a videotape that explains a lot about what Dr. Hill was doing here in town. He turned a man into a wendigo. Hill explains that four of them can leave, but one of them must die. First, the clown kills Abe and Nina, then the wendigo gets Megan. Max and Clover run into Melanie, who is now a wendigo. But first, more death.
None of them can remember how long they’ve been there. Tonight might be their last chance. Wait, Megan isn’t here on this go-round, maybe her time was up? They look at Abe’s phone and see videos of many, many previous deaths and monsters.
Clover decides it’s time to stop running away and elects to go into the tunnel, and the surviving three join her. It leads to the submerged ruins of the town that sank in the mine collapse. All the wendigos appear to be down there, now chasing them. They fight back more this time.
Clover runs into Dr. Hill, who explains that the monsters are a manifestation of their psyche. While her friends are getting hunted down, she manages to slip a bit of water into the doctor’s coffee, which makes him explode. Clover grabs his keys and rescues Megan. They all climb upward as the sand almost runs out. Aaaaand… they make it out as the sun comes up.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s another time-loop / Groundhog Day-type movie. The four characters die over and over. It started out pretty great, but it dragged a lot in the final half hour. There was lots of running around in the tunnels, but the “puzzle” part of the film was over by that point, and it slowed way down.
It was… OK.
Kevin’s Commentary
I didn’t realize this was based on a video game until we got started and I checked out the trivia.
The attacks seemed too random, and what they could do about it seemed too limited. It was too hopeless and pointless. It’s pretty well put together, but there isn’t much to root for.
The beginning had promise, but it got bogged down and repetitive. I thought it was on the tedious side more than entertaining.
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