How The Until Dawn Movie's Wendigos Compare To The Video Games -

Although Until Dawn’s trailer promises a story that only slightly resembles the cult video game, director David F. Sandberg’s upcoming adaptation does keep one major monster with the Until Dawn movie Wendigo. Released in 2015, Until Dawn was a hit horror video game with a killer cast and a unique hook. Until Dawn’s butterfly effect-style storytelling meant that a player’s decisions had a massive impact on the plot. Until Dawn included voice talent and motion capture performances from Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek, and Peter Stormare among others, and indie horror legend Larry Fessenden wrote its story.

Although there were rumors of an Until Dawn movie as far back as the game’s original 2015 release, it has taken ten years for the project to reach the big screen. Until Dawn’s remake arrived in late 2024, while the movie will be released in April 2025. However, fans of the fame may need to keep a very open mind when it comes to the movie adaptation. David F. Sandberg’s Until Dawn adaptation barely resembles the original game save for its isolated setting.

What The Until Dawn Movie’s Wendigos Look Like

The Until Dawn Movie’s Wendigos Are Tall White Bony Humanoids

A wendigo beside a woman hiding in the dark from Until Dawn 2025

In the video game’s story, players are hounded by a masked maniac until this entire portion of the game is revealed to be an absurdly elaborate and incredibly dangerous prank designed by one of the main characters. It is then that the real threat of Until Dawn’s video game story, the wendigos, comes to the fore. A supernatural being that originated in Algonquian folklore, wendigos are humans who transform into monstrous, super-strong, insatiable humanoids after committing cannibalism.

The wendigo appears in Stephen King’s novel Pet Sematary, the underrated Western horror movie Ravenous, and the 2021 movie Antlers, but Until Dawn’s villains may be the most memorable depictions of wendigos in video games. The video game’s wendigos are impossibly tall, lanky humanoid monsters with skeletal builds, long, clawed hands, sharpened teeth, and milk-white eyes. The Until Dawn movie’s wendigos are tall, long-limbed, white-eyed monsters with pointed teeth, but this similarity doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie will be true to the game.

How The Movie’s Wendigos Appearance Compares To The Video Games

The Movie Adaptation Is Largely Faithful Save For One Giant Wendigo

Five characters in Until Dawn are looking scared after waking up from their deaths

One of the biggest problems faced by Until Dawn’s movie adaptation is that the game is already incredibly cinematic, so a straightforward retelling of its story could result in a movie that feels like a thin retread of the game. Rehashing the story in live action without allowing viewers to control the experience could make Until Dawn feel like the same story, but told less effectively. So, Sandberg and company went with a completely different approach. Instead, Until Dawn’s movie adaptation tells a different story to the game, judging by its trailer.

The Until Dawn movie is about a group of teens who visit a remote, isolated guest house in search of a missing sister. Once there, they are brutally killed, only to come back to life and go through this same process all over again. The characters are trapped in a stable time loop that seems to be linked to the house, and they face different paranormal monsters every night. These include a masked slasher killer, ghostly apparitions, parasitic worms, and what looks like Until Dawn’s wendigos.

There is one shot of a gigantic wendigo as tall as a house in the trailer, even though the game only features wendigos that are under three meters tall.

Although they are only one of the many threats in the movie adaptation’s story, the appearance of the wendigos seems to be unchanged in the movie adaptation. There is one shot of a gigantic wendigo as tall as a house in the trailer, even though the game only features wendigos that are under three meters tall. However, this could be part of the Until Dawn movie’s attempts to avoid a major adaptation problem by adding new villains to liven up the game’s familiar story.

The Wendigos Role In The Until Dawn Movie Compared To The Video Game

The Movie’s Threats Appear To Be More Varied Than The Game’s Lone Villain

In the Until Dawn game, the wendigos are the primary threat that players must defeat to survive. In Until Dawn’s movie adaptation, the wendigos are only one of many monsters that the heroes face while trying to escape the guest house. Judging by the limited information given in the trailer, it seems that the group faces a new monster every time they die and regenerate at the house. One of these monsters is the slasher killer, another is a creepy elderly woman who appears to be possessed, and another is the Wendigos.

While Until Dawn’s cast changed in the jump from game to movie, its story appears to have also been heavily altered. The Wendigos still appear, but they are just another one of many threats faced by the heroes instead of acting as the primary antagonists. This means the Until Dawn movie may not feel particularly true to the source material.

Which Version Of The Wendigos Is Scarier?

The Wendigos Are The Main Villains In The Game

What makes the video game Wendigos scarier than the movie version is that the video games have the creatures as the primary nemesis for the characters. In the Until Dawn movie, however, they are just a small part of the story. In the game, if characters die, they stay dead, unlike in the movie’s time loop. The film also shows that there are different types of killers every time the characters come back to life – the Wendigo is just one of these, along with slashers, possible trolls, witches, and more.

Early reviews for Until Dawn describe the movie as a fun meta-horror film, similar to the praise critics previously gave Cabin in the Woods. However, while the movie is called a good time for horror fans, that is the opposite of what fans said of the video game, which was a terrifying and deep story about people surviving the Wendigo attacks. Fans of Until Dawn can still enjoy scary Wendigos in the game, while enjoying the fun scares from the film.

Until Dawn

8/10

Release Date: April 25, 2025
Runtime: 103 Minutes
Director: David F. Sandberg
Writers: Gary Dauberman, Blair Butler
Producers: Carter Swan, Roy Lee, Gary Dauberman, Charles Miller, Lotta Losten, Asad Qizilbash