For those of you old enough to remember the 1990s, there was a trend in PC gaming during that decade that saw the rise of what was called the "interactive movie." It was a concept that had been brewing since at least the days of producer William Castle and Mr. Sardonic, if not earlier, but when Hollywood tried and failed to put such an idea into theaters (see: the 1995 Mr. Maturation experiment), the gaming industry has made much better progress in combining the rich narrative and emotional experience of cinema with the personalization and immediacy of video games. However, the format was inelegant; even watershed games like Phantasmagoria and Wing Commander III: Tiger's Heart featured cutscenes with professional actors between non-cinematic gameplay moments. In other words, the best "interactive movie" games were still just games with parts of movies sprinkled throughout.

For my money, the interactive movie dream didn't come true until 2015, when Supermassive Games' Until Dawn was released (and I am not alone in that feeling). The horror game, with a script written by indie horror veterans Larry Fessenden and Graham Resnick, follows a group of young adults who decide to party in a snow house on the anniversary of their friends' untimely demise, leading to classic slasher movie shenanigans and. at the end, a supernatural twist. The game became a bestseller, received numerous accolades, and even received a remake that was released last October. Now, the circle between the game and the movie is closing even more, as the first trailer for the movie "Until Dawn" has just dropped. However, this doesn't feel like a carbon copy of the video game; the film is set in the same universe as the game, but apparently contains an original, self-contained narrative. If the filmmakers have really done what they set out to do, can Until Dawn do for the movie/video game crossover what the game did for the interactive movie and fulfill the promise of a shared universe between the media?

Like Fessenden and Reznik in the video game, the movie Until Dawn. has some horror vets behind it: screenwriter Gary Dauberman (best known for writing much of The Conjuring universe) and director David F. Similarly, just as the game featured some notable actors who were already established in genre projects (like Hayden Panettiere, Brett Dalton, and Rami Malek), this film cast some new young actors like Ella Rubin ("Anora"), Michael Cimino ("Annabelle Comes Home") and Odessa Azion ("Hellmaker" 2022). All this, plus the film carries the video game torch of trying to deliver a comprehensive homage to the horror genre, it looks like Until Dawn could become a franchise to rival "Scream" in its genre status.

What remains to be seen is exactly what a Until Dawn franchise looks like. This trailer gives us some clues, but many questions remain, chief among them what is going on with Peter Stormar appearing as a completely different character than the one he played in the game, Dr. Alan J. Hill? Since the story of the Until Dawn game involves characters who are twins, could Stormare be playing Hill's relative? Or is there a new supernatural twist? Will Until Dawn become a horror anthology, trying to incorporate different elements and subgenres into each new installment? Or, like Scream, will it stay centered on a slasher-meets-creature-feature premise? One thing's for sure: Until Dawn the movie won't have an interactive component, at least none of the usual on-screen screaming and yelling. Go ahead and tell the characters not to come downstairs, though - you never know, one day they might just hear you.

Until Dawn opens on April 25, 2025.