Until Dawn (2025)

Video Games are a mixed bag so this was always going to be a risky movie to sit through. I have never played the game and was not aware of the premise although the name did ring a bell but I couldn't have told you anything about it before seeing this film. Until Dawn is directed by David F. Sandberg who returns to the horror genre after directing the slightly disappointing Shazam! Fury of the Gods. 

The plot sees Clover and her Scooby gang of friends try and find Clover’s sister Melanie who disappeared and after getting some help from a gas station member of staff who definitely had nothing suspicious about him, end up in a house which appears to have been turned into a museum. All the gang are killed in record time and I was quite surprised but then they all wake up and have to go through it all again. There is a hidden secret of the house and the town where the scooby gang learn that experiments have been going on and people only last 13 times before they will disappear so they can't just keep going on and on and on. 

The cast is ok with Ella Rubin doing a good job of being the leader and her motivation to do some unwise things is understandable. Michael Cimino is slightly annoying as Max because he’s just there to be nice Clover because he fancies her. Odessa A’zion is another good performer as Nina and Ji-young Yoo did well with Megan and its a very underwritten role where she seemed to be there purely to show some moments of telepathy or something like that. I’m sure that Belmont Cameli is a nice guy but as Abel he is extremely insufferable and a complete moody so and so and I just wanted him to not make it but sadly they all do. Peter Stormare was the only person that I was aware of and that was purely because of his role in Prison Break.

There are some good things in this film. Firstly the premise of trying to survive until dawn and having to be proactive means that there is something going on and not just scenes of nothing. Another thing that works in the films favour are the deaths which is kind of the bare minimum I would expect from a horror film. I don't think I have seen as many people explode as I have done in this movie. The deaths are very good and there is one moment where Megan’s calf muscle explodes leaving her with only half a leg and then her stomach expands and thankfully it's not too graphic but enough to be horrific to stand out.

I must admit that I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would. It wasn't anything spectacular but it did what it needed to do and did it quite well. The gore was appropriate although I would have liked someone to have brought a few more lights because it was hard to see things at times. I know that might have ruined the atmosphere but a decent cinematographer would have found a way. Compared to the video game is something I can't comment on but given how many of these video games turned into movies that I have seen I get the impression that this film was quite faithful to the video game. On its own merit the film works and that is all you can ask for. Definitely worth your time but I would wait for it to come out on streaming and when we get to Halloween. 

Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

I enjoyed Shazam! when it came out in 2019, I thought that they did a good job of making a superhero character I didn’t know about and making them interesting. So here we are with the belated sequel (belated probably because of the pandemic) and to say that its a step down from the previous film would be quite the understatement. 

There are many things that don’t work with this film. Primarily the trio of Anthea, Kalypso & Hesperian who are supposed to be on the same side but don’t appear like that. It seems to be Hesperian & Kalypso vs Anthea. They rarely seem to be on the same page so if you were smart then you could just let them take each other out. There is also a potentially cynical piece of casting because Rachel Zegler is clearly a lot younger than both Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren and it would appear that they have cast Zegler purely so it seems more logical when she flirts or develops feelings for Freddy.

There is also the Wonder Woman problem. So there is a scene where we just see the back of Wonder Woman’s head because it's implied to Gal Gadot but then Gadot appears at the very end for what appears to be a crowbar in the scene. Nothing seems to make sense, which is really weird because the first one worked very well. It’s a clear example of making a film just because the previous one was a commercial success and not having a single clue what to do with it. It does have an interesting end credits scene where Shazam! meets Emilia and John from the Peacemaker series although this might be crowbarred in at James Gunn’s request to work into his DCU plans. 

Overall I was disappointed with this film. It’s a massive step down from the previous one and think that it serves as a good reason why films should stop trying to make films tie into other films and have things that are going to be referenced into other TV shows or things several years down the road because people will less likely to watch this film again or think that it was good if they have to watch other films for this to make sense.