Horror movies done well are cheap to make, pack in viewers and make much more money than they cost. The good ones leave an impression. Neither "Death of a Unicorn" nor "Drop" left enough of an impression for me to write a review but Until Dawn is different because it doesn't try to adapt the source material. It does its utmost to ignore as much of the source material as possible.

The basics are there. A group of young adults find themselves stuck in a house over the course of the night. They need to survive until dawn. When they don't, the night starts all over again but their physical and psychological wounds start to accumulate.

The video game is a butterfly effect simulator where your choices lead the protagonists down different story paths. The movie is a haunted house slasher flick with supernatural aspects. The movie director, Shazam's David F. Sandberg, has a horror background and knows better than to try and shoehorn in six hours of video game plot into a 90 minute movie.

What Sandberg has made from a video game story of young adult guilt and psychological disintegration is a smartphone era slasher movie. It doesn't try to be a young adult drama, though young adult drama sets the plot in motion. Choices do have consequences. But there's nothing here about someone's choice leading to these consequences. Are you looking for answers? You're not getting any in this movie. Enjoy the jump scares.

Jump scares are things Until Dawn does well and it looks good though you can feel how cramped the budget is through the limited number of locations. The practical effects are gruesome in a way that will please horror fans. The jump scares I mentioned before keep the tension up from the opening scene right until the end. The cast are capable but not memorable except for Peter Stormare does his usual great work of playing that unsettling Peter Stormare character we've seen in other movies.

This is a trash movie that I'd watch again only if they announced a sequel. Should you watch it? Probably not. But did this movie leave an impression? Yes it did. It was very well made for a B-movie horror flick.