Until Dawnis the next video game adaptation heading to the big screen. A loose adaptation of the popular survival horror series,Until Dawntells the story of Clover, who, along with her friends, becomes trapped in a horrific (and repeatedly deadly) time loop while searching for her sister. The only way out for everyone, while they endure countless grim outcomes, is to survive until dawn.
Game Rant had the opportunity to chat withUntil Dawn’s director, David F. Sandberg, and producer/writer, Gary Dauberman. The two shared their thoughts on bringing the game to the screen, their video game preferences, horror influences, and the reality of working with practical effects.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Game Rant: Gary, rather than directly adapting the games, your story seems to instead adapt the mechanics of decision-making, dealing with those outcomes resulting in different endings that theUntil Dawngames are known for. What were some of the challenges of making that work while keeping the stakes high in your story?
Gary Dauberman: The challenges were coming up with the very different scares and what new horror is going to unfold this night. But I would say also becauseit’s not a straight adaptation of the game, but it is expanding the story of the world of the game. I think that was challenging because we wanted to look at where can we take the story of the game and where can we push it forward and introduce some new characters and see what happens to them over the course of the night. It was challenging but it was also a lot of fun.
GR: David, you spent the last few years working inthe superhero space with theShazam!movies. How does it feel to get back to your horror roots withUntil Dawn?
David F. Sandberg: Liberating! You can kill everyone and the studio’s fine with it. It’s like ‘yeah sure, kill them in many different ways.’ No, but it was really nice and fun. This is a movie where I’ve gotten to live my dream of finally making that type of horror movie full of practical effects and blood and kills and monsters and all of these things that I’ve been wanting to do since forever, really. It’s been something I’ve been longing to do for a long time.
GR: Are either of you big gamers and are there any other game adaptations, horror or otherwise, that you would love to bring to the big screen?
David: I think you’re a bigger gamer than I am.
Gary: I am, I’m a regional semi-finalist for theNintendo World Championships.
David: Really?
Gary: Yeah! From when I was 11 years old. So I’ve been a gamer my entire life, starting at Atari. And there are a lot of video games I think would really translate well to the big screen. Man, there’s… I’m trying to think of what I can say.Castlevaniawould be amazing. God,I would love to see aShinobimovie. Anything in theFinal Fantasy[series] I’m a sucker for, I would love to see someone tackleElden Ring. I really think video games are coming into their own now in the movie world and I’m excited to see what’s ahead for them.
David: I do play video games, but I don’t play a ton of them. I’m sort of more selective with my time and stuff. But I do enjoy-
Gary: [laughs]
David: Well, I always feel like “I should be working,” you know?
David: Which is not a healthy-
Gary: You gotta think of video games as working.
David: I know.
Gary: But that’s what I do, like “no, no, I need to know this.”
David: I need to learn that. I do think that horror games, they scare me more than horror movies most of the time. I’ve really enjoyedResident Evil,Outlast,Until Dawn…
Gary:Have you playedAmnesia?
David: I haven’t, no.
Gary:Amnesia’s great. That would be another one that would be fantastic, but yeah there’s a lot out there.
GR: What I really liked in this movie is that there’s a great blend of genres throughout, with multiple types of supernatural forces just trying to kill our protagonists, David like you said, in just all these very imaginative ways. Were there any specific horror movies or other media that either of you looked to for inspiration for specific scenes, kills, or anything else in the movie?
David: That was the fun part, that we could take inspiration from everything, every horro movie you’ve ever seen, every game you’ve ever played. There were certain references, [to Gary]I know early on you referencedThe Descentfor when they go into the tunnels with the Wendigos and stuff…
Gary: One of my favorites.
David: Mine too! And that made me go like, “oh s*** yeah that’s gonna be so cool.” But yeah, I think it was sort of general horror influences from all over from found footage to slashers…
Gary: Yeah, it was like the tropes of each genre which is really where we drew our inspiration from as opposed to specific movies from each genre.
GR: David, I’m actually a really big fan of your YouTube channel under the name ponysmasher. I think you’ve shared a lot of great insights about filmmaking. Just recently you put up a video about the practical effects in Until Dawn. I found it really fascinating how much you wanted to do in-camera, those little tricks that anybody can do making a movie in their backyard, as you demonstrated in your test footage. If there were any other lessons from making this movie that you would want to share with up-and-coming directors, filmmakers, what would they be?
Gary: More money, more time? [laughs]
David: Well, yes! Because you do need a lot of time to do these things right. A lot of them you only get one shot to do it, and then it’s like “Well, that’s it!” But we did get lucky with a lot of things where it did work out. We always had this thinking that if we need to add some visual effects to fix it, we can always do that. But a lot of times it really worked out and it was really great. But you have to adapt everything around it. There’s a scene where blood goes everywhere, basically, and we had to shoot that last because we really destroyed the set. So there was no going back from that. It just takes a lot of…
Gary: It’s prep.
David: Prep, yes.
Gary: He does a ton of prep, which I think is the most important thing when making a movie. He does really rudimentary versions of what ultimately makes it onto the big screen. Like you’re dealing with cardboard and stuff…
David: Sometimes it’s drawings, sometimes it’s shooting something…
Gary: But you’re using your iPhone. Like a lot of times we’ll be like “David how are you going to do this?” and he’ll be like “It’s like this,” and he sends a 30-second video that’s like something that would be on his channel and you’re like “yeah, that looks great!”
David: And that’s what I really love doing, that sort of… It’s almost like a magic trick. You have to be clever about “how do we do this without doing that?”
