Horror

My first horror movie I chose for this blog post is called Until Dawn and it was directed by David F. Sandberg and written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler. This movie was based on an original video game called Until Dawn as well and was developed by Supermassive Games. 

Review: Until Dawn is an intense survival horror movie that blends supernatural suspense with psychological factors. The storyline follows a group of friends stranded in an isolated lodge where things start to unfold as the night falls. This story has many eerie sound designs and unpredictable twists to keep the watchers constantly on the edge of their seat, just like every horror movie should be. (Photo from imdb.com)

Ranking: I would rank this movie a 8/10. I thought this was a strong movie, but I'm a big fan of horror movies and I think there's many more movies that I thought caught my attention better.          

Analysis: This movie explores many different themes such as moral responsibility, guilt, and overall human fear. Much of this movie comes from other things than just monsters. There was an underlying message that I caught onto and it honestly made this movie much more interesting. The cinematography of this movie is embraced in the areas where it shows the characters isolation and the emotional suffocation. It really made me more interested in the movie itself because it leaned on a psychological maze type of movie structure in which it blended reality and formed a question on what is hallucination versus haunting. 

Comments: Overall, I thought the pacing of the movie was a little slow. I believed since it’s a horror movie, I expected it to have more constant action.

The second movie for this blog I chose was Weapons. This movie came out in August 2025 and was directed and co-produced by Zach Cregger. This film is shown through multiple perspectives, which helps the story have more layers. 

Review: Weapons is about the disappearance of 17 children from the same third grade class. These children were all running out of their homes at 2:17 AM and never returned. In class the next morning the teacher arrived to find her entire class gone except for one. The story unfolds with suspicion and fear spreading through the community.

Ranking:  I would rank this movie about a 8/10. Overall, I liked the story/concept, acting/characters was good, and I also thought the horror aspect was great. 

(Photo from kpcw.org)

Analysis: I believe Weapons was one the stronger horror/mystery films of 2025. I enjoyed how producer Cregger used horror to reflect the deeper anxieties people have and not focusing on the scary part of horror movies. It focused on key themes such as trauma, grief, blame, and the rush to moral panic. This film also covered how tragedy ripples outward, how fear can twist morality, and how trauma can reshape communities. The part I enjoyed most of this movie was watching the different perspectives within this film. As this film shows the overlap of these perspectives, it also helps show the psychological and social sides of the story that surround the disappearance of the kids. I do think this film in the beginning drags and takes time to set up the multiple perspectives. I also think this film ended up feeling underwhelming from how big the build up was. 

Comments: All in all, I think the multiple POVs made this movie much more enjoyable as well as more like a collective tragedy than a horror movie focused on just a villain.