gary dauberman – Horror Ghouls

Clover’s sister Melanie has gone missing. Desperate for any answers or at least a clue, Clover goes on a trip in search of her missing sister and brings her ex-boyfriend Max, her friends Nina and Megan, and Nina’s boyfriend Abe. They try to retrace Melanie’s steps according to the last places she was seen, and ends up by the gas station where she had sent a message before going missing. When talking to the station attendant, he claims that people tend to go missing near the mining town called Glore Valley. Alright, there’s a pinpoint to check out. When they drive to this place, a heavy rainfall makes them seek shelter at a visitor center. There, they notice the heavy rain is…strangely local. Hmm. Inside the abandoned visitor center, they find a wall that’s filled with posters of missing people. No surprise that they also find Melanie’s photo there. Nina signs the guestbook just for the fun of it, and soon a masked assailant attacks and kills everyone. And that’s the start of a time loop where they will be brought back to the first night, having to sign their names in the guestbook once more and try to survive the night. If they die 13 times, however, they will end up missing just like the previous visitors…including Melanie.

Until Dawn is a horror film directed by David F. Sandberg, and written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler. It’s loosely based on the 2015 PlayStation video game by the same name, where the movie is using the same universe while featuring an original standalone story.

Movies based on horror games do not, unfortunately, have many home-runs to brag about. Most of them are either underwhelming, straying too far from the source material and thus alienating the game’s fanbase, and sometimes they’re just outright awful. Sure, there are some exceptions, but they’re few and far between, and of course there’s also a few that could end up in the fun-bad category. So, where does Until Dawn belong? While I have not played the PlayStation game and have no way to compare the game to the movie, I have noticed that many have placed it in the category of movies that strays too far away from the source material. So if you’re a fan of the game, I guess it’s a safe bet that this movie would be a disappointment. All in all, I have to admit we didn’t have high expectations when watching it, but as we more or less just watched it without any comparisons in mind it actually turned out to be….fairly okay? By no means any masterpiece, but it was entertaining enough with some decent atmosphere and visuals. The pacing is fine, the deaths are sometimes quite gory, and there’s a mystery that keeps you engaged. In no way does the movie rely on you having any prior knowledge of its source material, making it a movie where you can go in completely blind.

So overall, Until Dawn didn’t turn out to be the disaster we more or less expected. It’s a pretty fine supernatural horror film, works fine on its own and gave us a decent ride. Yeah, I’m certain our opinions might have been completely different if we had played the game and were devoted fans of it. Personally, I have rarely seen a movie based on a book where I’ve read the book first and actually fully enjoyed the movie version, for example. That’s just the way it works for most people, the level of depth and engagement you use when reading a book or playing a video game will always be considerably different from a movie.

Director: David F. Sandberg
Writers: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler
Country & year: USA/ Hunagry, 2025
Actors: Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell, Peter Stormare, Tibor Szauervein, Lotta Losten, Mariann Hermányi, Willem van der Vegt, Zsófia Temesvári
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30955489/

Ben Mears is a writer who has decided to return to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot in order to write a book about his childhood. When arriving there, he very quickly meets and befriends a woman named Susan Norton, just so we have established the love interest right away. At the same time, as kid named Mark Petrie must defend himself from the school’s bully, and a newcomer called Straker opens an antique store. This mysterious man, a European, has moved into the Marsten House which has been abandoned for a long time due to a history of murders. We soon learn that Straker is some kind of Renfield, and his vampire master is the Orlok look-alike Kurt Barlow. It doesn’t take long for people to start dying with strange bitemarks on their necks, and the survivors must try and combat the evil that has invaded their hometown.

Salem’s Lot is based on a 1975 novel by Stephen King, directed by Gary Dauberman. The novel was previously adapted for television in 1979, a mini series directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Texas Chain Saw Massacre). There was also a sequel called A Return to Salem’s Lot which was released in 1987, and even a TV mini series called Salem’s Lot which was released in 2004. They sure have given the novel a lot of adaptions, but none ever got to be shown in the theaters, which includes this 2024 version. This movie also had a fair bit of hiccups during its production, to the point where many suspected the entire film would end up scrapped. In 2023, however, Warner Bros decided to release the film on Max.

The film’s reception was not particularly good, and the trailers didn’t exactly promise anything of golden standard either, and this dampened our expectations. Overall, though, we found it to be.. quite decent, actually. There characters are ok, although not portrayed in such an in-depth manner that you could give too much of a shit about any of them. There are some creepy atmospheric scenes and it was able to create enough suspense to keep your interest up. It’s even a bit campy, which shouldn’t come as a surprise in a movie where a 12-year old is running around killing vampires and saving people like he’s some primary school Van Helsing.

Overall, Salem’s Lot is pretty fine for what it is, there is some decent atmosphere here and there and Barlow can come off as creepy enough when you don’t get to see him too clearly. Many people prefer Tobe Hooper’s 1979 mini series, and others again prefer the book. Without making any comparisons between neither book nor previous adaptions, this movie works well on its own. You just can’t avoid being left with a feeling that they didn’t really hit the nail on its head compared to what was probably the intended original vision (which had a 3-hour long duration).

Writer and director: Gary Dauberman
Country & year: USA, 2024
Actors: Lewis Pullman, Makenzie Leigh, Jordan Preston Carter, Alfre Woodard, Bill Camp, John Benjamin Hickey, Nicholas Crovetti, Spencer Treat Clark, Pilou Asbæk, Alexander Ward
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10245072/

Tag: gary dauberman

Until Dawn (2025)

Salem’s Lot (2024)