The Until Dawn movie should take notes from an underrated Tim Curry film

You might think Until Dawn getting a movie adaptation is a little pointless. The game is already a playable movie in itself, after all. However, if it takes notes from the genre it’s adapted from, as well as a famous 1985 Tim Curry movie, it has great potential to shock audiences.

It was announced earlier this week that Supermassive’s horror video game Until Dawn is getting the live-action treatment, to be headed up by Shazam director David F. Sandberg. 

Released in 2015, the game starred real Hollywood actors like Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere, in which players took the role of eight different characters who have to survive on a desolate mountain against a deadly threat.

Part of the appeal of Until Dawn was its butterfly effect-style gameplay, in which player-made choices shaped the narrative, changing the fates of certain characters and events. Naturally, due to its cinematic presentation and reliance on cutscenes, the game ended up feeling more like an interactive horror movie.

And so it leaves this choice of adaptation a little puzzling. Why remake a video game into a movie, that was already essentially a playable movie itself? This isn’t something like The Super Mario Bros. Movie or Sonic the Hedgehog, where directors can twist the core concept to fit a narrative more suited to the big screen.

Supermassive Games

Reddit users were quick to make these comments, too. In a thread discussing the news on r/movies, one user wrote: “Ehhh, I’m against this. The game is pretty much an interactive movie as is”, while another commented: “I get doing movies for gameplay heavy games, but Until Dawn is basically an interactive movie with actual actors.”

On the other hand, adapting a game such as Until Dawn presents a very unique opportunity. And it’s one that already has a precedent set in the world of cinema. So, how exactly do you adapt a game where the fates of each character change depending on each playthrough?

Clue (1985) is basically the movie version of Until Dawn

Clue, an adaptation of the board game of the same name, already solved this problem back in 1985. Starring Tim Curry as the butler Wadsworth, with other performances by actors like Christopher Lloyd, Martin Mull and Lesley Ann Warren, the movie was essentially a live-action adaptation of a typical game of Clue.

A murder mystery board game where the killer, murder weapon and location changes on each playthrough, Clue would pose a great challenge when it comes to adapting it to a film. But writer John Landis came up with a clever way around this detail.

Paramount Pictures

In the final 15 minutes of Clue, just as Wadsworth is about to reveal who the killer is, the movie plays one of three endings. Each ending features a different murderer, with a different payoff depending on which version you watched.

If you view Clue on DVD at home, or on Paramount Plus where it’s available to watch now, you’ll get a version of the movie which shows all three endings stitched together. But back in 1985, cinemas would show the movie with only one of the endings.

It meant that you had multiple reasons to go back to see the movie if you liked it in the hopes of seeing a new version with an alternate ending. It would create conversations with other moviegoers, who may have seen a different ending to you. The cultural chatter surrounding the movie would evolve into discussing which is the best ending and theorizing about any mythical versions of the movie that weren’t shown in many theaters.

And this is exactly what the conversation around Until Dawn has been like for the past nine years. Discussions online about which ending you got, which characters survived to the end, and how to obtain the best ending are what the game is best remembered for.

If David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn adaptation took a page from Clue’s book, in which multiple endings of the movie exist in separate screenings, it could revitalize that same feeling the game brought to its players. Not only would it create interesting conversations around the movie, but it would also solve the issue of adapting something that seems unadaptable while also staying true to the source material.

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