Until Dawn: A Perspective on Video Games to Movies

When the Until Dawn movie was announced, I, like a lot of fans, was ecstatic. Throughout the years since it was released in 2015, I have watched countless streamers play through it, seeing how different choices affect the story and the fates of all the characters. I have always loved games where your choices matter and can impact the trajectory of the story, so of course I fell in love with a game that was based entirely around the butterfly effect. But, once the trailer dropped, I didn’t recognize the game I had fallen in love with at all.

There were new characters, a new setting, and an entirely new story. What seemed like the horror version of Groundhog Day was nothing like the game we all know and love, even though it was given the same name in the game’s exact same font. So, what was going on here? Why did we get an Until Dawn movie that appears to be nothing like the beloved game it is based off of?

While this isn’t new news or new questions to be asked, since the original trailer came out in February 2025 with the movie released in April 2025, I finally got around to giving it a chance and noticed something interesting. Until Dawn does something different that I haven’t seen in other video game adaptations, which is to integrate actual gameplay mechanics into the plot: dying and restarting to try again. Although it is certainly unique, was this choice necessary? I’m not sure, especially since it does change the plot from the game we all know and love, but it does pose a new question. What makes a good video game adaptation? Is it purely plot accuracy?

The plot is usually the biggest problem with video game adaptations, and why shows like Witcher lost the long time fan of the franchise, Henry Cavill, as its leading actor, but there is much more that goes into a game than the plot or even its characters. The gaming experience is just as important, if not more so.

So, why did Until Dawn flop in the eyes of longtime fans even when it tries to bring the actual gameplay experience into the plot of the game? Let’s get into it.

Until Dawn: same name, different story

By all accounts, Until Dawn should have been the perfect game to make into a movie. It is pretty much an interactive movie already, one with multiple endings, with the gameplay serving as a tool to explore the world and make choices to try to unlock the best ending possible for the characters. All the writers had to do was pick which choices would be canon to the story and voilà, there’s your plot.

Instead, they chose to create an entirely new story with only a few similarities and one familiar character.

But, this wouldn’t be the first time a beloved video game got a movie with a different plot. Resident Evil is a great example of this. While Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is based off the first two Resident Evil games, the series of Resident Evil movies starring Milla Jovovich as Alice don’t follow the plots of the games. But, they are set in the same world, with the same evil Umbrella Corp. and the same zombie T-virus and even appearances from familiar characters. So while the original movie series does not share the same story as the games, it still feels like they’re within the world of Resident Evil.

Until Dawn doesn’t hit the same mark. The changes they made create too much distance between the game and the movie. And while there are elements of the game in the movie (i.e. Dr. Hill, the wendigos, the sanatorium, the mining accident, even Josh’s patient file on Dr. Hill’s desk) it feels like they took the game’s core elements and ran in a completely different direction. Yes, the characters must fight to survive until dawn, yes, they are being hunted down by wendigos, one of them being the missing sister of the main character, yes, there is also a masked man chasing them that doesn’t end up being the real bad guy, but it is presented in a completely different way.

The wendigos of the movie don’t operate the same as the ones in the game. Hannah turns into a wendigo because she is driven to such a state of starvation that she eats the flesh of her dead sister, while the characters in the movie are slowly turning into wendigos with each passing attempt to escape as Dr. Hill torments them and makes them fight for their lives. If you are going to create a movie based on a game, the least you can do is operate under the same lore, especially for a game that’s primary motivation is to learn all the lore so you can discover the best possible ending for the characters.

And that’s what separates Until Dawn from movies like Resident Evil. While the story is different, the lore is more or less the same, which makes it feel still in the realm of the games even if there are differences.

Dying and dying and dying all over again: the gameplay experience

When looking at the plot of Until Dawn, I have a lot of questions for the writers.

Why is there a new cast of characters? Why did the setting change? Why is Dr. Hill now the main antagonist? Why is he experimenting on people to create wendigos? Why are wendigos created differently? Why do the characters keep dying over and over again, completely changing the meaning of surviving until dawn? Just, why. Why did you set out to create a movie based on a game that has such a big fanbase, and then completely change the story? Why?

While we may never get the answers to any of these questions, I did want to focus on one key difference between the game and the movie: the characters dying over and over again.

When watching the trailer, other than the completely new cast of characters, the biggest difference was this new horror Groundhog Day scenario that was introduced. They die and then wake back up to try again to survive the night, and will only succeed if at least one of them survives until dawn.

At first, I was confused as to why this would be incorporated into the movie, because even if they were going to change the characters and the story while still being inspired by the game, this is nothing like it. The title Until Dawn comes from the fact the help will not be able to arrive at the Washington Lodge until dawn, meaning that the characters have to find a way to survive until help can come. Even The Quarry, Until Dawn’s follow up game from the Supermassive Games studio, operates in the same way, even if it has an entirely different premise. There’s no magical hourglass, no time loop, no curse that is keeping them trapped in Glore Valley until they either survive until dawn or be turned into wendigos.

But, isn’t that how you play the game?

Not the plot—as we’ve already gone over—but the experience of it. Because aren’t we, the player, stuck in a time loop, playing the story over and over again as many times as it takes to save everyone? Or to reach a certain ending? Maybe you want Matt to confront Emily about cheating. Or you want Chris and Ashley to confess to each other. Or for Josh to get the best possible ending for his…situation. Or maybe you said something stupid that gets a character killed hours later. There are so many scenarios in which you might want to go back and redo some of the game, or even start over entirely to see if you can get a different ending. So, while the time loop feels jarring when comparing the movie and game side-by-side, it isn’t as random as it may come off as. It’s just that instead of focusing more on the plot of the original game, the movie replicates some of its gameplay mechanics.

Even your therapy sessions with Dr. Hill are represented in the movie. In the game, there are a series of interludes during which you answer questions, as if in a therapy session with Dr. Hill. The questions you answer, which have to do with your fears and feelings towards the characters, can alter the game. While your answers won’t change the plot, they can impact what you see throughout the game. The items you chose to fear the most will appear throughout the environment and can change how the masked psycho attacks the other characters.  And because you are playing as Josh in these sessions, his relationships with the other characters can change as well as his psychological state and remorse level towards the end.

This mechanic in the movie is presented in the way Clover’s fears are manifesting themselves as the things killing them in Glore Valley. The masked killer, the witch in the cabin, even the water that makes them explode. While the real threats are Dr. Hill and the wendigos, Clover’s fears are shaping their experience within Dr. Hill’s experiment, which she has to overcome in order for her and her friends to survive. I don’t think it’s as clever a mechanic as its gameplay counterpart, considering I didn’t realize that this was the reason for all the seemingly random things killing them night after night, but it is another way that the movie takes the experience of playing the game and incorporates it into its plot.

So, while it appears that Until Dawn bears very little resemblance to the game it was created after, I’d argue that Playstation Productions and Screen Gems went for a more unique approach, to capture the gameplay experience rather than focus on remaining true to the game’s original plot. Which begs the question, can you make an accurate movie based on a game by just focusing on its plot?

How to make a movie based off a game: a tutorial

To answer my own question, I would say yes, that you can make a game-accurate movie by just focusing on its plot, but I do think it’s interesting to explore the actual gameplay experience within the movie-making process.

While plot accuracy is often the biggest cause for concern when making a game into a movie, there are actually a lot of games that have very minimal plot, or no plot at all, that are also made into movies. Five Nights at Freddy’s is the most recent example of this. Even though there is plenty of lore to be pieced together as you play throughout the series of games, there is actually very little plot within the games themselves (at least, when looking at games one through four). Yet, two movies have already been made about games where you sit in a security office, push buttons, and try to survive the night. And while there are complaints about how the movie holds up to the game’s extensive lore, it still feels like Five Nights at Freddy’s, even when it portrays a much bigger story than the game itself.

The creators of the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie took creative liberties with the story, but paid attention to the game where it mattered most. The animatronics, the job, the security room. So, while it may have been different from what fans were expecting, it still hit all the right notes to draw on the nostalgia of players. It still felt like it belonged within the same universe as the game.

Movies like Sonic the Hedgehog are successful because they pay attention to what fans are most passionate about, the characters. With a series of over 100 games featuring Sonic and his friends (or enemies), there are countless options of stories to choose from, but it’s the characters that matter to the fans. So it comes as no surprise that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was the most successful film of the series, considering it features the most popular character of the franchise, Shadow.

These are just two examples among so many movies that have been made into games, but I think they highlight exactly where Until Dawn went wrong. While it is not uncommon for movie makers to go off-script in terms of the plot, the makers of Until Dawn didn’t pay attention to what the fans of the game enjoyed the most about it. What they did, adding a new component to the story that replicates the gameplay mechanic of dying over and over again until you can survive throughout the entirety of the game, was inherently interesting, but wasn’t successful because they had already pulled the plot too far away from the game’s original story. It ends up being another reason the movie is different from the game, rather than adding something new to a story we are already familiar with. It would have been much more successful if they stuck to the original story and added the death loop within that. The story would still bring out the sense of nostalgia that players are looking for while creating something unique to its original form of media. Instead, it became a movie that is barely recognizable as the game it was based off of.

With the new Resident Evil movie coming out on September 18th, 2026, it will be interesting to see how it holds up when compared to the games. We already know that it doesn’t retell the story of any of the games, rather that it is an original story set in the same universe as the games. It will take place in Racoon City, following a medical courier, Brian, as he tries to survive an outbreak turning the city’s residents into mutilated creatures.

Right away, it sounds very much like a Resident Evil game while telling a different story from the games. But it is set in the same setting as the first few games, where the franchise began, with a familiar zombie virus, so I have high hopes that it will still feel like it belongs with the games even though it tells a different story.