SUrvival is a set of ratings determined by choice. Each action has a butterfly effect which has an impact on the decision maker and those around them. In some cases, difficult choices must be made to achieve optimal quality of survival. And the success or failure of these sacrifices is ultimately subjective. These are the challenges of supermassive games' Up to dawn (2015), an interactive horror survival video game in which players take control of eight friends who stuck in a cabin on Blackwood Mountain during a memorial for the death of their friend and must survive a myriad of terrors … until dawn.
These same challenges are also true to adapt a video game for cinema or television, especially when it comes to deviation from source equipment. The very adaptation process requires difficult choices, and the public responses to these choices have not only on the success of the film or show themselves, but on all the climate of video game adaptations in a pop culture space which seeks both the stories of success at the box office and the evaluations, and new ways of engaging the public with the POL popular.
David Sandberg's Up to dawnDe Screen Gems and PlayStation Productions, received a mixed reaction from the public following his own choices, as well as intermediate criticisms and a modest box office of the first weekend, although low production costs mean that it is likely to recover If it has not already been done. But Up to dawn is too interesting, and by my count, too fun, an experience in the implementation of video game mechanisms on the big screen to be reduced.
Instead of following the plot or the characters in the game, Up to dawn presents a new group of friends to us. Clover (Ella Rubin), Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-Young Yoo) and Abe (Belmont Cameli) are looking for the missing sister of Clover, Melanie (Maia Mitchell), which leads them to a welcome center in an abandoned mining city, Glain Valley. Once there, they find themselves caught in a death loop, reviving the same night and again each time they are killed.
Hook, and what defines Up to dawn Apart from other time loop films like Palm Springs,, Before fallingAnd Marmot dayIt is that every night offers different monsters and horror scenarios ranging from a masked wicked slasher to a witch, Wendigos, and more. And whenever the characters come back to life, with the memories of what they had to face and how they died, they come back sporting traces of the wounds that killed them, their body changing until they start to become another creatures tracks this nightmare scenario.
With 13 chances for everyone to survive together, the group is opposed to a check clock and must use the acquired knowledge of their death to not only ensure their survival as a group, but also avoid making a “part of the night” forever. There is a lot of leading to the game, and the film takes place in the same world, Peter Stormare taking over his role as mysterious and manipulative psychiatrist, Dr. Hill. But the film widens the tradition of the game to create a unique future horror experience, a celebration of several horror sub-genres and practical effects.
Make a movie from Up to dawn has never been an easy perspective, and the decision not to use the story or the characters in the game has been encountered by many fans. The game, written by Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, is a masterpiece of the horror of modern survival. It is not a surprise, given the story and the success of writers in the space of the horror film (including Habit,, Wendigo,, The Devil's HouseAnd X)),, that Up to dawn On the scale, scope and dynamics of the characters in a film. In addition, the game presents movement capture and recognizable actors, notably Rami Malek, Hayden Panettiere and Jordan Fisher.
Up to dawn This is not a case of cutscenes simply highlighting the quality of the graphics. The game looks like and looks like a film in all respects, its opening song to the choice of lighting and the angles, and the way the characters move in the world. Supermassive monitoring game, the just as excellent The careerWritten by Reznick, Will Byles and Alex Farnham, goes further by adding a film mode that allowed the “players” to watch the game as a film, and offered different options like “Gorefest” for a more graphic experience, and the “Horror History Filter Pack” which gave the game three filter options: Indie Horror, which imitated the 8 mm style, Offered a VHS Horror, horror style, “80s horror, which offered a vhs-style, horry mmm style,” 80s horror, which offered VHS-STYLE, HORRY MMM STYLE, “80s horror, which offered A VHS-STYLE Look, Hord 8 mm,” 80s Horror, which offered VHS Horror for a filter black and white. Up to dawn And The career– Along with the series of shorter supermassive anthology games, The anthology of dark imageswith which Fessenden and Reznick launched with Medan man (2018) – Attracted the attention and enthusiasm of video players and moviegoers.
Resist a battered approach for the rhythm
Given the end of the line between the game and the film, what was the point of making a Up to dawn movie? This is a question that many fans have asked about the announcement of the film. And adaptation was never going to be as simple as its peers in this space. HBO found nominations of immense notes and appointments with The last of uswhich, although based on a PlayStation game much more action and oriented play than Up to dawnFollows the intrigue of the games almost beaten to beat and sometimes fired for a shot. Despite the complaints according to which the show does not justify justify its existence, and the petty grievances, often petty on the casting choices which do not correspond to the conceptions of the game, The last of us was considered a massive success and a highest point in adaptations of video games. Also a success, while adopting a very different approach, is Amazon To fallwhich takes place in the world and the continuity of the games but presents the public to new characters in its vast post-apocalyptic framework. But unlike The last of us And Up to dawn,, To fall is an RPG game in which players play as a character they have created and named, which facilitates the transition to a new protagonist for the series.
Some argued that Sandberg and the writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler could simply adapt Up to dawn Beat for Beat, like The last of us. Undoubtedly, the characters should have been overhauled, given that the original distribution is now 10 years older than their characters, but it was certainly doable, and apparently what some fans of the game would have preferred. But the creators of the film argued that this approach would not have captured the spirit of the game, in which many connection paths exist according to the player's choices. On the decision not to simply adapt the game, Sandberg explained his justification in an interview with Screen::
“The game is almost a 10 -hour film, so I think it would not have been as interesting for me if we were just doing the game, because then it will be like a cut version and not interactive of the game, which would simply not be the same thing. So, I was very excited to read the script and see that it was necessary Up to dawn In addition and did more with him, but also kept – when you play the game, the fun part is somehow replaying it and making different choices for the characters and seeing different dead and all these things. And it was so brilliantly incorporated in the form of a film, which is not interactive, but you can always get the different results. »»
Co-Scenarist Blair Butler shared similar feelings on his own reserves with the presentation of the game. “The remaster [released in Fall 2024] Was coming out at the same time as we hoped to bring this film to bring together. And that was another reason why I think that all the people involved, Gary, too, did not just want to redo the original script, Beat for Beat. “”
The existential need for experimentation
The desire of filmmakers of freedom of creation, while playing in the world of Up to dawnis understandable. And I would say that the film always feels of a play with the game, the characters filling the archetypes that you would see in a supermassive game, and the production design of Jennifer Spence nailing the atmosphere and the look of the pieces that would feel at home in the game. In addition, the film takes a page of the spin-off VR game, Until dawn: blood rushwho sees the player caught in the mind of one of the Up to dawnThe central characters and face various nightmares inspired by his anxieties and his fear of death. These aspects, as well as the film implementing a version of the option “restarting the chapter” in the game with the temporal loop mechanism, all capture the spirit of the game. What the Sandberg film is meager, these are the quietest moments of the game that give players the possibility of talking to the other characters and knowing more about them while establishing stronger and positive impact.
While there were certainly other choices that could have been made to bring Up to dawn On the big screen, there is something of unique value in the way the film works the game mechanisms, such as our ability to restart when we make the wrong choice, in the story and the theme of history. If video game movies, especially those who already repel the borders between cinema and television, must have a longevity in Hollywood, filmmakers must simply tell the games. Up to dawn May not find the perfect balance, and there is an opportunity for this method of adapting the mechanisms based on the choice to do more work in the characters department in the future. But as a game test, this is a successful first attempt to do something new while incorporating the concept of the game. The alternative, and an option that all the game fans have, is to play the game again if we want to relive the exact experience of the game. Sometimes, even if fans of a game, if we want to see these properties survive and engage in new ways, we just have to give up control.
