Until Dawn: The Latest Film Based on a Survival Horror Video Game

Larry Fessenden digs wendigos. He wrote and directed Wendigo and The Last Winter, featuring a sort of metaphorical wendigo. He and Graham Reznick also the long, branching story that unfolded in the popular horror-survival video game Until Dawn, which included wendigo content. The Twin Peaks-y “world” of the popular PlayStation game has been adapted for the big screen, but the narrative and characters are completely different in David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

In the game, Josh Washington lost two twin sisters. Clover only lost one, but Melanie’s disappearance really launched her on a downward spiral. As the film opens, Clover and her friends are on the last leg of a road-trip retracing Melanie’s last known whereabouts. It has been a super-fun trip for everyone, especially for Abel, her bestie Nina’s new boyfriend. No closure appears imminent, despite the rituals conducted by her supposedly physic friend Megan. However, just as they prepare to pack it all in, the strange guy at the gas station suggests they check out Glore Valley, the place where all the missing people seem to vanish.

Off they go, right into a time-loop, which sounds like a major departure from the game. Regardless, it is a surprisingly sinister macguffin. If they live past the crack of dawn, they break the cycle. However, this is not Groundhog Day. Each night, they are killed in a different manner, by a new bogeyman, so it is impossible anticipate the danger or correct past mistakes. Somehow, the evil force tormenting them is connected to the freak 1952 catastrophe that destroyed the mining town that suddenly appears around them. Presumably, the mystery man, Dr. Hill, is also involved, since he clearly comes and goes as he pleases.

Sandberg’s film could be highly divisive among fans of the game, since it tells a radically different story. However, open-minded horror fans should appreciate its original take on time-loop terror. The screenplay co-written by Gary Dauberman (who also directed the recent Salem’s Lot remake) and Blair Butler is surprisingly clever. They torment the heck out of those dumb kids, while keeping the audience guessing. There is also some nifty design work, particularly in the eerie “visitors’ center,” where each nightly nightmare begins.

The Grand Duke of Corsica, Set in Malta

The political assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia rocked the government of Malta. Many politicians and their allies were embroiled in the scandal, but to date, only the three thuggish assassins have been prosecuted. However, divine retribution might be coming in the form of an unusually virulent strain of malaria. British architect Alfred Rott might be lacking in social graces, but he is sufficiently professional to see his latest job through, despite the perilous outbreak in screenwriter-director Daniel Graham’s The Grand Duke of Corsica, which releases tomorrow on VOD (and opens theatrically in Brooklyn, just barely).

The Grand Duke lives in Malta, rather than Corsica, in the decaying luxury you might expect from a Thomas Mann novel. Rott originally came to the corrupt but picturesque EU member-nation to build a concert hall, but he did not suffer criticism gladly when the commissioning committee objected to his design’s resemblance to female sex organs. However, that leaves Rott free to accept the Grand Duke’s commission: his tomb.

Rott is not sure what to make of his potential client, but as he enjoys the noble’s hospitality, the architect starts to warm to his eccentricities and his commission. Weirdly, we are not sure what to make of the rest of the film, because Rott’s interactions with the Grand Duke are its most grounded scenes. Meanwhile, more or less, an up-and-coming actor is filming a production about St. Francis of Assisi, until the pandemic interrupts.

Unfortunately, Corsica just doesn’t work as a film. Its deliberate artiness is rife with pretention, but it lacks the grand deliriousness of a film like Lech Majewski’s Valley of the Gods. However, it is not without its merits, primarily those of Timothy Spall, who is compulsively watchable as the blunt-spoken Rott. Wouldn’t you love to hear his character review this film? It would be brutal.

Assassin’s Code: To Live and Die in Cleveland

You could say it is like a “creed.” Supposedly, hitman Kurt Schlychter plies his trade according to rigid framework of ethics, but it is hard to pick up on it, until he flat out tells us late in the third act. Throughout most of the film, he acts perfectly willing to cap anyone Cleveland’s secret crime boss pays him to off. Thanks to Schlychter, Angelo Leonetti successfully kept his real business on the down-low, but blundering rookie cop Michael Connolly could very well mess-up the arrangement in David A. Armstrong’s The Assassin’s Code (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

Technically, Connolly’s father died while on duty, but the suspicious circumstances ruined his reputation. Yet, instead of a supervillain or a vigilante, he follows in his old man’s footsteps, becoming a shunned and despised Cleveland police detective. Captain Jack O’Brien, his father’s former partner, assigns him busywork, but he manages to land the case of a hijacked police evidence truck filled with meth, by being in the right place at the right time.

Thanks to some guidance from Laura Consolo, the public prosecutor, Connolly focuses on Leonetti right from the start. Unfortunately, Schlychter keeps killing his witnesses. He also starts keeping tabs on Connolly’s wife Jia, a cellist on the Cleveland symphony that just so happens to be bankrolled by city benefactor, Angelo Leonetti.

Armstrong seems to be going for the vibe of Andrew Davis’s Code of Silence, one of the more ambitious Chuck Norris movies of the mid-1980s that combined high-flying action with realistic crooked cop intrigue. Unfortunately, Justin Chatwin is a little too nebbish as Connolly and Peter Stormare is so flamboyantly weird as Schlychter, it never really convinces us. Plus, Stormare has a scene in which the hitman chronicles his grandfather’s reluctant service as a German grunt in WWII to the utterly baffled Jia Connolly that is amazingly tonally wrong, in about half a dozen ways.

Still, the film is relatively gritty and both Elizabeth Anweis and Mark Thompson (former co-host of the once-popular Mark and Brian radio show) are quite strong as Jia Connolly and Captain O’Brien. It is a bit mind-blowing to see Witchblade’s Yancy Butler turn up as the long-stymied Consolo, but she isn’t bad lecturing Connolly. As a pleasant surprise, Assassin’s Code is nicely supported by a stylish crime-jazz-influenced soundtrack, featuring trumpet solos by Chris Tedesco and saxophone solos by Ian Roller.

Assassin’s Code is definitely a grubby B-movie, but it is Cleveland’s grubby B-movie. The screenplay by Edward Lee Cornett and Valerie Grant is a mostly by-the-numbers affair, but there is a bit of style to Armstrong’s execution. It sounds good, even when it behaves somewhat slow-wittedly. We have seen worse, but you can safely wait for it to stream on Netflix or whatever. For those determined to represent for Cleveland, it opens today (5/11) in LA at the Arena Cinelounge and in Jersey at the Williams Center Cinema.

Dark Summer: Blood on the Ankle Bracelet

Daniel Austin must spend his summer under house arrest, but he will be confined to a seriously broken home. Even though his absentee mother and absconded father will not be around, he will still have company. That will be a very bad thing in Paul Solet’s Dark Summer (trailer here), which opens midnight-ish tonight in New York at the IFC Center.

Kids and the internet can be a bad combination, especially in Austin’s case. When he developed a crush on the slightly gothy, sad indie rock listening Mona Wilson, he hacked all her online accounts, because he is a socially stunted weirdo. Obviously, he was caught—hence the ankle bracelet and the regular drive-by visits from his P.O., the gruff but cranky Stokes. At least his outsider pals, Abby and Kevin, manage to smuggle him a laptop to catch a neighbor’s wifi. That night, a suicidal skype call from Wilson unleashes a whole mess of supernatural trouble.

Summer follows relatively close on the heels of Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound, but it turns out the world really did need two house arrest chillers, or at least midnight movie patrons will be nicely satisfied with them both. Housebound’s wickedly macabre sense of humor probably means it is more fun, but Summer establishes its own horror movie identity to a pleasantly surprising extent. Mike Le’s screenplay has some clever twists and turns, but it is really going somewhere specific, rather than just stringing together a series of jump-scares.

Summer also represents a major step up for Solet after the middling Grace. He picks up the pace this time around, but not at the expense of setting the scene and building the atmosphere. Wisely, Solet also refrains from showing too much in the early scenes, letting the uncertainty of Austin’s situation reinforce the claustrophobic vibe.

Clearly, Peter Stormare got the horror movie memo, because he hams it up just enough as Stokes. Whenever he pops-in, you know he will deliver some genre goodness. In contrast, Keir Gilchrist exudes anti-charisma, but it is appropriate for Austin. Oddly, he and Stella Maeve (pretty solid as Abby) look like they might be brother and sister. While their resemblance is not as (unfortunately) striking as Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, the added layer of creepiness sort of works in context for Summer.

Yes, Austin is in for a darned dark summer, but that still probably sounds okay to New Yorkers invigorated by yesterday’s single digit temperatures. Regardless, horror genre fans should be impressed how Solet invigorates the conventions of Grudge-style horror. Indeed, it is way better than you would expect from the hum-drum one-sheet. Recommended pretty highly for anyone looking for a moody supernatural outing, Dark Summer opens late tonight (1/9) at the IFC Center.