I loved the original Until Dawn – a spruced-up horror take on those old FMV adventure games, with just the right mix of B-movie self awareness and creature feature scares. I was very close to buying the recent remake, actually, until I watched the extended prank scene online and realized, oh no, they’re taking themselves seriously now. They prestige-ified it. It insisted upon itself, Louis, so I didn’t bother. I still wouldn’t say no to a sequel though, and based on a couple of (admittedly vague) hints from two of the game’s actors, one might already be in the works.
The first item in the spurious evidence locker is an Instagram post from Dr. Hill’s actor, Peter Stomare. Here’s an Imgur link to that – it’s a mocked up newspaper that reads “Until Dawn sequel confirmed with the remake”. Although now that I think about it, it could just be a parody of games media. Fair. The second nugget of nothing much is this clip of Hayden Panettiere saying “they…are going further with it”. I say nothing much because there’s just as much chance this is a reference to the remake. That, or because there’s also a film on the way, which seems superfluous beyond belief to me, not that that’s ever stopped these things.
If I sound a lil’ cynical about all this, it’s mainly because time has shown Until Dawn to be a lightning in a bottle situation, with Supermassive’s subsequent projects seemingly reluctant to embrace the same innocent schlock and uncomplicated B-Movie charm. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
It’s also worth tempering any expectations of a sequel with the proviso that the remake doesn’t seem to have had much buzz about. At least that’s the case on Steam, where I’d assumed PC players might have been interested in playing a previous console exclusive. Launch week player counts were apparently as low as 2,607, says Ian Games. Perhaps it’s sold gangbusters on PS5, but planned revival or no, it’s hard to see Sony going all in if the remake underperforms.