Peter Stromare Archives

Review: ‘Until Dawn’ (2025), starring Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino, Odessa A’zion, Ji-young Yoo, Belmont Cameli, Maia Mitchell and Peter Stormare

April 24, 2025

by Carla Hay

Odessa A’zion, Belmont Cameli, Ella Rubin, Michael Cimino and Ji-young Yoo in “Until Dawn” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

“Until Dawn” (2025)

Directed by David F. Sandberg

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional town of Glore Valley, Pennsylvania, the horror film “Until Dawn” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Asian person and one multiracial person) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Five young people go searching for the missing sister of one of the group members when they find themselves trapped in a haunted house, where they are killed and revived and can only escape if they survive until dawn.

Culture Audience: “Until Dawn” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Until Dawn” video game and mediocre-to-bad horror movies.

Peter Stormare in “Until Dawn” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

The horror film “Until Dawn” starts off as suspenseful but goes downhill into being a gory and repetitive bloodbath with a weak ending. This story (about young people stuck in a loop of being murdered and revived) has minimal connections to the video game. Considering all the possiblities for the “Until Dawn” movie to be a cinematic step forward from the video game, it’s disappointing that the “Until Dawn” movie ends up relying on the same old slasher film clichés.

Directed by David F. Sandberg, “Until Dawn” was written by Blair Butler and Gary Dauberman. The movie is based loosely on the “Until Dawn” horror video game, which has the same “survive the night” concept, with players of the video game choosing from numerous possibilities for various scenarios. People don’t need to know anything about the “Until Dawn” video game to see the movie.

These are the main similarities between the movie and the video game: One of the villains from the video game is a character in the movie and is played by the same actor. There are creatures running around called wendigos. There’s a backstory about a psychiatric facility and a deadly mining disaster.

“Until Dawn” (which takes place in the fictional town of Glore Valley, Pennsylvania) begins by showing a woman in her 20s named Melanie Paul (played by Maia Mitchell) crawling out of a hole in a ground in a remote wooded area. (“Until Dawn” was actually filmed in Hungary.) She is quickly killed by an unidentified man (played by Tibor Szauervein), who’s wearing a mask that resembles the mask worn by serial killer Michael Myers in the “Halloween” movies. In “Until Dawn,” Melanie gets hacked to death with a machete.

The movie then fast-forwards to a year later. Five people, who are all in their early 20s, have gone on a road trip and arrived by Jeep to Glore Valley to look for Melanie, who has been missing for the past year. Based on a cell phone video that Melanie sent before she disappeared, Melanie was last seen at a gas station/convenience store in Glore Valley, which is an isolated town surrounded by woods.

These are the five travelers who end up getting trapped in a sinister place:

Clover Paul (played by Ella Rubin), Melanie’s grieving younger sister, is the only one in group who thinks that Melanie could still be alive.
Max (played by Michael Cimino), Clover’s ex-boyfriend, is sensitive and has unresolved feelings for Clover.
Nina Riley (played by Odessa A’zion) is a tough-talking rebel who clashes with Max because Nina taunts Max about still being hung up on Clover, while Max taunts Nina about her most recent dating relationships lasting for only a few months.
Abe (played by Belmont Cameli), Nina’s current boyfriend, is a university student who has a tendency to be an arrogant know-it-all (he likes to remind people he’s a majoring in psychology), and he wants to be the “alpha male” of the group.
Megan (played by Ji-young Yoo) has psychic abilities and is the person in the group who does things like have the group members form a circle to do breathing exercises.

At the gas station/convenience store where Melanie was last seen, Clover shows a photo of Melanie to the creepy owner/manager (played by Peter Stromare), who’s behind the counter. He tells Clover that if Melanie is missing, she most likely went missing in the part of Glore Valley were other people have gone missing. He points in the direction of where it is.

The five travelers end up driving to what looks like a bed-and-breakfast house because there’s a Welcome Center sign outside. As soon as they get out of the Jeep, they notice that misty rain is surrounding them on all sides but only in a limited area around the house. Abe has been filming everything on his phone. And because this is a predictable horror movie that takes place in a remote area, you already know that the victims will be stuck in a place where they can’t get cell phone signals or any WiFi/Internet service.

When they go inside, they see the house is abandoned. (Or is it?) There’s a very large hourglass in the foyer. There’s also a guest book where Melanie’s signature is the last signature in the book. Her signature is written 13 times in a column, with each signature looking scragglier than the previous signature. This seems to be proof that Melanie was there, but where is she?

The five members of the group are then alarmed to see a bulletin board with several missing-person flyers tacked on to the board. The people in the flyers are of various ages. Melanie is on one of the flyers, but no one in the group made these flyers.

A lot of what happens next is already revealed in the trailers for “Until Dawn.” It’s enough to say that the masked murderer goes on a rampage, and the five vistors get killed. However, the five murder victims find out that every time the hourglass turns around, they are resurrected but have sustained certain injuries and have other changes to their bodies that they don’t understand. The trapped victims also see that they are now on missing-person flyers on the house’s bulletin board. When they try to leave the house, they still die in various ways.

A smaller run-down house suddenly appears from across the street from the main house. As if to make things too obvious, the smaller house has a door that’s spray-painted with the words “Fight the Glore Witch.” And sure enough, inside the house is the Glore Witch (played by Mariann Borbala Hermányi), who tells certain trapped characters that there’s only one way to leave: “Survive the night or become a part of it.”

“Until Dawn” can’t overcome a big plot hole that lingers throughout the movie like the stench of a rotten screenplay: When the five trapped people wake up, they repeatedly say they can’t remember anything. Some of them can’t remember how they previously died or how long they’ve been trapped. And yet, they somehow remember the “rule” of what they need to do to escape every time they are resurrected. This lack of consistency ultimately sinks the movie.

There’s also a scene where Abe remembers filming videos on his phone. When the group goes to look at the videos, it’s just a bunch of time-wasting, gross-out videos that show body infestations and infections. This scene just brings up a question that viewers might wonder about but the movie never answers: “Why can Abe show videos on his phone but they can’t use his phone to keep track of the time?” The jumbled timeline makes the movie very incoherent.

Meanwhile, “Until Dawn” devolves into a tedious splatterfest, as the movie becomes enamored with showing the characters’ bodies spontaenously exploding as ways for them to die instead of being murdered. The first few times an exploding body is shown, it’s effective. After the fifth time and beyond, it’s annoying. The acting performances in “Until Dawn” are very typical of horror movies where a bunch of young people are the targets of terror.

There are numerous chase scenes that are plagued with sloppy film editing. Why all of this terror is happening just becomes increasingly irrelevant by the time the movie comes to its atrocious end. And like all substandard horror movies that rely too much on over-used stereotypes, the end of the movie shows that the story could be continued—although the “Until Dawn” movie doesn’t leave enough intrigue at the end for most viewers to want a sequel.

Screen Gems will release “Until Dawn” in U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025.

Review: ‘Cryptozoo,’ starring the voices of Lake Bell, Angeliki Papoulia, Grace Zabriskie, Louisa Krause, Michael Cera, Thomas Jay Ryan and Peter Stromare

September 13, 2021

by Carla Hay

“Cryptozoo”

Directed by Dash Shaw

Culture Representation: Taking place in San Francisco, Florida, Kentucky and the former Soviet Union in 1967, the animated film “Cryptozoo” features a nearly all white cast of characters depicting humans and hybrid/mutant animals.

Culture Clash: A heroic veterinarian teams up with her boss and a gorgon to rescue a baku (a rare dream-eating hybrid creature) before it is captured and sold on the blaxck market by greedy poachers.

Culture Audience: “Cryptozoo” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in adult-oriented animation that’s a throwback to psychedelic, hand-drawn animation of the late 1960s.

Lauren Gray (voiced by Lake Bell), Pheobe (voiced by Angeliki Papoulia) and Joan (voiced by Grace Zabriskie) in “Cryptozoo” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

“Cryptozoo” brings an intriguing, adult-oriented alternative to the slick kiddie animation that has oversaturated the movie business. The hand-drawn graphics in “Cryptozoo” are sometimes rough around the edges, but the movie has an adventurous and psychedelic spirit that perfectly suits the story, which is set in 1967. Written and directed by Dash Shaw, with animation direction from Jane Samborski, “Cryptozoo” might not interest viewers who prefer their animation to be more elaborate and modern-looking. But the movie is admirable for being committed to its unique vision instead of trying to look like it wants to be a safe blockbuster hit.

“Cryptozoo” begins with a scene that definitely wouldn’t be in a children-oriented animated movie: A hippie couple in their 20s have sex while on a romantic date in an unnamed wooded area in San Francisco. Get used to seeing full-frontal nudity in “Cryptozoo.” The movie has an extended adventure sequence where one of the heroes spends the entire time naked and is neither self-conscious nor apologetic about it. And there’s a sex orgy scene in the movie.

The amorous couple in the movie’s opening scene are Amber (voiced by Louisa Krause) and her boyfriend Matthew (voiced by Michael Cera), who are lost in the woods. Amber and Matthew both consider themselves to be part of the counterculture movement. Matthew talks about a dream he had where he and his peers stormed the U.S. Capitol building and started a perfect society. In terms of personality, Amber is feisty, while Matthew is more laid-back.

Amber says about their jaunt in the woods, “I don’t know where we are. Everyone can go fuck themselves!” When Matthew compliments parts of Amber’s body as foreplay, she asks him, “What about something about my personality?” Matthew replies, “I really love your imagination.” That seems to do the trick, because the next thing you know, they’re having sex.

This bliss doesn’t last long though, as Amber gets nervous about spending the night in the woods. She’s afraid that wolves might attack them. Matthew smokes a joint and tells Amber not to get so worried. They wake up to see a seemingly never-ending high fence surrounding them.

Amber and Matthew, who are completely naked, decide to climb over the fence. They see a castle that Matthew remarks reminds him of something that could’ve been built for Walt Disney. And then, a unicorn appears. Matthew accidentally kicks something at the unicorn, which reacts by charging into Matthew and impaling Matthew with its horn.

A frightened and angry Amber tries to get the unicorn off of Matthew and eventually kills the unicorn by pounding it with a rock. After the unicorn dies, Amber breaks off the unicorn’s horn to use as a weapon in case she encounters any more attacking animals. And that’s when Amber looks around and sees that the place where she’s at has several mutant animals in cages. For example, one of the mutant animals is a chicken with a snake’s head.

Amber doesn’t know it yet, but she’s in Cryptozoo, a special sanctuary for mutant animals, called cryptids, that were rescued from poachers and people who want to sell these creatures on the black market. Cryptozoo is the brainchild of a no-nonsense elderly scientist named Joan (played by Grace Zabriskie) and the zoo’s veterinarian Lauren Gray (voiced by Lake Bell), who is in her 30s. The operation of Cryptozoo is funded by making it a tourist attraction.

Lauren explains in a flashback and a voiceover that she’s been obsessed with this idea of helping these mutant creatures, ever since she was a little girl and met a cryptid called a baku, which looks like a small elephant. The baku is an animal that can eat dreams, and the baku came to her as a little girl to eat her nightmares.

However, this baku (which is a female) disappeared and hasn’t been seen for decades. The speculation over whether the baku is alive or dead has become an urban legend. Lauren, who hopes to one day see the baku again, says in a voiceover, “I dedicated my life to help keep cryptids like her safe from harm.”

The rest of the movie chronicles an international adventure where there’s a race against time to prevent a group of cryptid hunters from finding the baku. The leader of these poachers is Nicholas (voiced by Thomas Jay Ryan), who is ruthless and greedy. Nicholas satyr ally named Gustav (voiced by Peter Stromare), who is hedonistic and untrustworthy.

Lauren and Joan team up with a Gorgon named Phoebe (voiced by Angeliki Papoulia), who hides the snakes on her head by wearing head wraps and wigs. She gives the snakes sleeping medication when she has to be out in public, in order for the snakes not to move around and bring attention to themselves. Phoebe has special powers which are revealed in the story.

Phoebe is reluctant to go on this mission because she wants to spend time with her fiancé Jay (voiced by Rajesh Parameswaran), who is a human and loves and accept Phoebe for who she is. However, Phoebe is convinced to join the mission because Lauren and Joan are both human, and they think it would benefit the mission if a cryptid was also on this journey.

One of the clues to solving the mystery of where the baku might be comes from a recent arrival to Cryptozoo. He is a young male cryptid named Pliny (voiced by Emily Davis), whose entire body is shaped like a human hand. Pliny doesn’t talk, but he can make noises to indicate yes or no answers. However, Pliny has an overprotective mother named Giulia (voiced by Irene Muscara), who has a tendency to interfere with the investigation.

People who enjoy fantasy worldbuilding will find much to like about “Cryptozoo,” which has elements that were definitely influenced by Dungeons & Dragons. “Cryptozoo” is also a rare animated feature film where all of the main heroes are female. The story is somewhat predictable and the dialogue isn’t going to win “Cryptozoo” any animation screenplay awards, but the visuals and some of the scenarios facing the characters are very compelling and presented with a well-paced flair. It’s fair to say that “Cryptozoo” might be one of the most memorable animated films that viewers will see in any given year.

Review: ‘Songbird,’ starring KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stromare, Alexandra Daddario and Demi Moore

December 16, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Songbird”

Directed by Adam Mason

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles during a coronavirus pandemic in the year 2024, the sci-fi thriller “Songbird” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latinos and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: During the pandemic, a minority of people have immunity to the disease but are also supercarriers of the virus, and this dichotomy affects relationships and has caused a black market to sell illegal immunity passes.

Culture Audience: “Songbird” will appeal primarily to people who like watching tacky disaster movies with ridiculous plot developments.

Peter Stromare in “Songbird” (Photo courtesy of STX)

In the horrifically tasteless disaster film “Songbird,” which takes place during a coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions of people and devastated the entire world, unscrupulous and greedy people have exploited the situation so that they can benefit financially. Ironically, it’s the same mindset that is obviously why this moronic film was rushed into production during the real-life COVID-19 pandemic—to cash in on people’s fears about the pandemic and use the movie’s pandemic storyline as a gimmick to sell it during a real-life pandemic. The results are a useless movie where every single second looks like it was based on an early, substandard screenplay draft, with none of the filmmakers caring about taking the time to improve the film’s quality.

“Songbird” (directed by Adam Mason, who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay with Simon Boyes) takes place in Los Angeles in the year 2024. The worldwide mortality rate has risen to 56% and 8.4 million people have died because of COVID-23, which is supposed to be a deadlier strain than COVID-19. And there’s no vaccine. The desolate and devastated landscape of Los Angeles looks like a city in the aftermath of a tornado, and there’s a general atmosphere that a corrupt, totalitarian government is in charge. Because of this high mortality rate, Los Angeles has been on lockdown, with people ordered to stay at home, except for essential workers.

One of those essential workers is a bike courier in his mid-20s named Nicholas “Nico” Price (played by KJ Apa), who works for an online retailer called Lester’s Gets, which sells a variety of items that people can use in their homes. It’s not a giant company, because Nico’s boss Lester (played by Craig Robinson) is the only person shown in the dark video control room that monitors the movements of the company’s couriers, via GPS. In other words, the film’s budget was so low that the filmmakers didn’t bother to cast anyone else to work in this monitor room.

Lester communicates frequently with Nico and has to watch Nico like a hawk, because Nico often takes detours, goofs off, and is late with deliveries. For example, in one of the movie’s scenes, Nico randomly shoots hoops at a basketball court while in the middle of a delivery. Lester lectures Nico about Nico’s constant tardiness, but Nico acts like someone who knows he probably won’t be fired.

And why hasn’t Nico been fired because of his tardiness? Because he’s one of the small minority of people on Earth who are immune to COVID-23, and therefore he can freely go outside without needing any face coverings. However, these Immunies, as they’re nicknamed in this movie, are also supercarriers of COVID-23. And so, they’re both envied and shunned by the general population.

Immunies are identified by immunity passes (which look like yellow wristbands) that can be scanned to reveal their personal information. These immunity passes are highly coveted by people who want to be able to go outside whenever they want without fear of being fined or arrested. People are required to take frequent COVID-23 tests at home, which are done on government-issued hand-held monitors that can diagnosis people just by scanning their faces.

People who are found to be infected with COVID-23 are forced to go to the Q-Zone, which is not a health recovery center but it’s described in the story as a death detention center. These detentions are handled by the sanitation department, which is headed by Emmett D. Harland (played by Peter Stromare), who’s an Immunie. Emmett is such an over-the-top, creepy villain that you just know he’s involved in more misdeeds than just being rough and unmerciful with the people he detains.

Because of these drastic changes in society, Los Angeles (and presumably, most of the rest of the modern world) has become a place where people have become paranoid about going outside, for fear of being sent to the Q-Zone. Masked military soldiers patrol the streets and are ready to send people to the Q-Zone if they don’t have immunity passes. Some of these patrollers are quick to draw their guns if they see anyone on the street without a mask. It’s what happens to Nico when he tries his make his way to a home for a delivery, and he’s blocked by overzealous soldiers until Nico shows them his immunity pass.

The high demand for immunity passes has caused these passes to be sold on the black market at prices that can only be afforded by wealthy people or people who can come up with the cash any way that they can. Two of the people who are considered among the top-tier sellers of illegal immunity passes are unhappily married couple William Griffin (played by Bradley Whitford) and Piper Griffin (played by Demi Moore), who are already living an upscale life but apparently are greedy and want more money. William’s day job is as a high-ranking executive in the music industry, even though the movie never shows him doing any work except his illegal side hustle of selling immunity passes.

And because “Songbird” is a movie like the 2005 drama “Crash,” which eventually shows how everyone in the story is connected to each other in some way, the Griffins’ home is one of the places where Nico makes a delivery. People are not allowed to open their doors to delivery people. Instead, deliveries are dropped into a capsule outside a home, and the item in the capsule is then disinfected through ultra-violet rays.

Nico has been to the Griffin home enough times that the house residents recognize him when he arrives. William and Piper have a daughter named Emma (played by Lia McHugh), who’s about 11 or 12 years old and who has respiratory problems, because she always has to wear an oxygen tube. The implication is that she’s especially vulnerable to getting COVID-23.

Emma is really just a “token” underdeveloped character that doesn’t serve any purpose in the movie except to try to make William and Piper look more sympathetic. It’s a futile effort, because these two spouses, who have simmering hatred for each other, are ruthless and sleazy, although one of them turns out to be a lot worse than the other. An innocent and sweet kid like Emma doesn’t deserve the parents she has.

Meanwhile, although Nico might seem to have a cavalier and cocky exterior when he’s on the job, the movie slowly shows that he’s actually in a lot of emotional turmoil. His entire family is dead, presumably because of COVID-23. And before the pandemic, he was a paralegal with plans to become a lawyer, but he had to abandon those dreams. There’s a scene where Nico goes back to the now-deserted law office where he used to work and bitterly goes through some of the remnants of his past.

But more heartbreaking for Nico than the loss of his career dreams is the fact that he’s fallen in love with a woman who’s around his age, but they haven’t been able to be in the same room together because of the pandemic. Her name is Sara Garcia (played by Sofia Carson), who lives in an apartment with her beloved grandmother Lita (played Elpidia Carrillo), whom Sara calls Grammy. Sara’s parents are also dead because of COVID-23.

Nico and Sara met when he made a delivery to her apartment. They had an instant connection and fell in love through constant contact over the phone. Nico also visits Sara by going to her apartment, but not going inside and instead talking to her outside the apartment door. It’s explained that the apartment building is under heavy government surveillance, because it’s a “hot spot” for COVID-23 infections. Therefore, Nico and Sara know they could be arrested if he’s allowed inside her apartment, and Sara and Lita could be sent to the dreaded Q-Zone.

Sara sees firsthand (through her front-door keyhole) how brutal one of these arrests can be, when one of her female neighbors is dragged from her apartment, yelling and pleading for mercy, because the neighbor tested positive for COVID-23. Before the hazmat-suit-wearing sanitation workers arrive to take her to the Q-Zone, the neighbor begs Sara to let her inside Sara’s apartment to hide, but Sara refuses to hide the neighbor, on Nico’s advice. Emmett is supervising this particular detainment with sadistic glee. And he vows that he will be back to this apartment building to get more people because he’s convinced that the entire building is infected.

There are several scenes in “Songbird” where Nico talks to Sara through her apartment door, like he’s her pandemic Romeo to her quarantined Juliet. It’s supposed to be romantic, but Nico and Sara just utter cheesy soap-opera-type dialogue to each other that will make viewers roll their eyes or laugh at the corniness of it all. And when Lita starts having a persistent cough, you know exactly where this movie is going to go in the “race against time” part of the film that’s supposed to make this movie a suspenseful thriller.

Meanwhile, one of Lester’s employees who works from home is a lonely paraplegic named Dozer (played by Paul Walter Hauser), a military veteran in his mid-30s who lost the use of his legs during the war in Afghanistan. Dozer, who’s been a self-described shut-in for the past six years, uses a drone to keep track of Lester’s courier employees. Dozer has a strong sense of right and wrong and likes feeling as if he’s a “rescuer,” which all affect his actions later in the story.

Dozer has been a subscriber to a pretty YouTuber named May (played by Alexandra Daddario), who is a self-described struggling singer/songwriter. She has a YouTube channel called May Sings the Blues, where she sings cover songs and her own original music during livestreams and in prerecorded videos. People who watch her YouTube channel have the option to donate money to her, because she often tells her viewers that the pandemic has made it impossible for her to make money by performing in person.

Dozer has been one of her biggest donors, so May decides to connect with him online and reaches out to him to personally thank him. They begin chatting and soon get very candid with each other about the problems in their lives. Dozer tells May about being a shut-in: “I was in lockdown before it was fashionable.”

May tells Dozer that she moved to Los Angeles because a guy in the music industry promised to make her a big star. She and the guy ended up having an affair, which she now regrets, but the guy still wants to keep seeing her. And then the pandemic happened, and she’s been stuck in an uncomfortable limbo where she still needs the guy to help her with her career, but she wants to break off their affair.

Because of the strict lockdown, it’s illegal for people to have in-person social visits with other people who don’t live in the same household, but May’s lover insists on visiting her for their sexual encounters. May confides in Dozer that she’s afraid of getting infected and/or arrested because of this guy. Dozer offers to help her any way that he can. May’s “mystery lover” is eventually revealed, and it will be shocking to no one who’s seen enough of these types of formulaic, unimaginative movies.

Except for the COVID-23 pandemic aspect of the movie, there’s absolutely nothing unique about “Songbird,” which is a lot like many other badly made post-apocalyptic movies that have a weak, nonsensical plot and dumb action scenes. There’s a chase scene where Nico gets trapped in a building with Emmett and some of Emmett’s armed goons. And out of nowhere, Nico gets help from a gun-toting vigilante named Boomer (played by Paul Sloan), who randomly shows up in the scene and then is never seen in the movie again.

Viewers will also have sit through lots of inane dialogue, such as during another scene when Emmett has cornered some people he wants to capture. He taunts them by saying, “Roses are red. Violets are blue. You think you can hide? I’ll find you!”

One of the producers of “Songbird” is Michael Bay, who’s best known as the chief filmmaker for the “Transformers” movie franchise and the first two “Bad Boys” movies. Even though those movies had mediocre-to-bad screenplays, at least those films had high-octane action to keep people interested and wanting more. “Songbird” doesn’t even have memorable action scenes, unless you think it’s an improvement that at one point in the story, Nico ditches his bicycle and replaces it with a stolen motorcycle.

It all leads up to an ending that’s so terrible that it will make people either laugh or get angry, depending on how much it might bother people that their time was wasted by watching this garbage. And why is this movie called “Songbird,” when the only singer in the movie is a supporting character, not a leading character? Just like this entire ludicrous movie, it doesn’t make sense and it’s too lazy to try to give any logical explanations.

STX released “Songbird” on VOD on December 11, 2020.