David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn arrives as a philosophical riff on time’s circular cruelty, adapted from the 2015 PlayStation classic. It follows five friends—Clover, Max, Nina, Megan and Abe—who journey into the remote Glore Valley in search of Clover’s missing sister. Rain-soaked roads lead them to an abandoned lodge where each night ends with an antique hourglass flipping its sands, thrusting them back to that same first moment (what I call a “loopscape”).

A supernatural undercurrent hums beneath the slasher shocks. Masked killers and wendigo-like apparitions breach every shadowed hallway, while moments of dark humor—grotesque one-liners, self-aware banter—cut through the tension like a scalpel.

At stake is more than mere survival. Clover carries a weight of unspoken guilt; her attempt at atonement mirrors society’s struggle to reckon with buried traumas (think communal cycles of forgetting and remembering). The group’s hunt for clues—mysterious guest-book entries,...