Until Dawn is such a bummer of a disappointment for me. Not only because the source material succeeds so well in being a greatly atmospheric, twisting, scary but also funny horror story but also because it's so easy to squint and see a legitimately great film buried inside it. On the positive, the practical effects, monster make up and general atmosphere and vibes are all really well done, which makes it a greater shame that they are all but wasted here. The score is also fine, nothing tremendous or ground breaking and slightly too sentimental in places but overall does the trick.
On the negative: man, I was WITH this movie until it started approaching the third act. While the characters are forgettable and the actors don't bring any real gravitas to them, that would have been fine with this being such a good highlight reel for the splatter and creatures, the third act takes such logistical leaps over Grand Canyon sized plot gaps the film as a whole really just falls in upon itself, much like the town featured within.
Spoilers for the third act:
When the film decides to take a massive leap in time from their third or fourth night to what is assuredly going to be their 13th and final attempt at surviving yet the characters remember nothing from the nights in between DESPITE the fact that up until that point they have remembered, the film really, really lost me. It's a narrative excuse to show a few night segments in a rapid succession and while they're fun, losing the plot to execute them was really, really misguided. Shortly after we get the main exposition dump in the film and that is also handled really, really poorly with a final plan at beating the main antagonist that is so laughable it feels like a fake-out.
The tie ins to the video game is also handled pretty poorly. Peter Stormare is criminally wasted here and his inclusion / the ultimate explanation or justification for why everything is happening makes such little sense and brings with it so many questions simply doing a similar twist to the original video game's twist with Josh would have made more sense. The creatures that are the main antagonists in the game are so dissimilar here that I truly think they were supposed to be something else but half way through production someone went "Hey, weren't there X in the game?" so they just changed the dialogue up. They look fine but don't act or behave like their game counterparts and their origins are skipped over too quickly.
As a lover of Cabin in the Woods to the point where the symbol for the Ancients is tattooed on my wrist not to mention an adamant lover of the video game, I had such, such, high hopes for this. Turning the video game's excellent horror story into a meta twist that could include multiple sub-genres was a great idea. Until Dawn really shines when it's simply jumping from sandbox to sandbox having gory, bloody fun in them. Then its' Mother shows up and demands an explanation for why there's 17 sandboxes in the house and all it can do is stutter and come up with a very poorly thought out excuse it offers with a smile.