The following contains spoilers for Until Dawn, now playing in theatersUntil Dawn‘s ending directly connects the new film to the original video game that inspired it. Until Dawn is based on the Supermᴀssive Games тιтle of the same name, although the adaptation is largely surface-level. While both plots focus on teenagers and the threat posed by the Wendigo, many of the characters, threats, and mechanics of their respective stories differed. The biggest connection between the two versions was the presence of Peter Stormare as Dr. Hill, an enigmatic figure in both.

The Until Dawn movie’s ending reveals a lot of new details about Dr. Hill, positioning him as the actual antagonist of the story. Notably, the final sH๏τ of the film suggests he may even be empowered by some supernatural elements, which could have a direct impact on the lore of the game, especially how the final moments of the film directly set-up the plot of the 2015 video game of the same name. Here is how Until Dawn directly ties into the game that inspired it, and how that changes the lore of both.

The Cabin In Until Dawn’s Final SH๏τ Sets Up The Original Video Game

2025’s Until Dawn’s Final Scene Directly References 2015’s Until Dawn

The final sH๏τ of Until Dawn is focused on a black car driving up to a snowy cabin, which is also the opening of the video game that inspired the film — suggesting the film is actually a direct prequel to the video game. Until Dawn ends with Clover and her friends escaping the haunted house they’ve been stuck in, breaking the time loop and giving themselves a chance to drive off with the dawn. However, the film cuts back to Hill’s office, seemingly abandoned in the aftermath of his apparent demise.

The security cameras he had used to monitor Clover and the others shifts suddenly to a new location, specifically a large winter lodge in the snowy mountains. This is seemingly the setting of the Until Dawn video game, which largely takes place at that cabin and in the surrounding woods and mines. This indicates that Hill’s next targets are actually the main characters of that game, a similar group of unᴀssuming friends who find themselves hunted down by monsters in the dark and risk being transformed into a similar state.

Until Dawn’s Ending Suggests The Movie Exists In The Same World As The Game

Until Dawn Has Different Scares Than The Game, But Hill Connects Both Stories

On many levels, the Until Dawn cinematic adaptation is a surface-level riff on the video game. While there are some shared similarities like the presence of the Wendigo, the two stories are largely different. The Until Dawn game’s only true supernatural element was the presence of the Wendigo, which was presented as the curse awaiting those who feast on the flesh of other people. In the game, the teenagers are ᴀssembled by their friend Josh to honor the memory of his sisters, only to torment them as a masked “killer” before the Wendigos attack.

Until Dawn, the film, has a completely different story from the game that inspired it. There’s no cycle of death and rebirth, and the rules surrounding the Wendigo are different. However, the shared presence of Dr. Hill as a researcher is an interesting connection. In the original game, Dr. Hill appeared to Josh as a hallucination. Although there is apparently a real-life Dr. Hill who has been helping him, this hallucination Hill communicates with Josh during his schemes for revenge and directly with the player at certain times.

In the game, Hill seemed to just be a figment of Josh’s fractured mind. However, the revelations in the movie suggest that Hill could be a more supernatural force. It’s possible that his haunting judgment of Josh was meant to push him further towards a dark transformation, similar to how he researches and studies the protagonists in 2025’s Until Dawn as they are tormented by different types of monsters. The shared visual look of the Wendigos and the presence of Hill in both stories suggest that both versions of Until Dawn take place in the same universe.

Until Dawn Mostly Works As A Prequel To The Video Game

Until Dawn’s Final Scene Leads Directly Into The Game

Until Dawn, being a prequel to the video game, largely works, and actually recontextualizes some major elements of the original тιтle. In that game, the primary danger was the Wendigos that stalked the forests and mines, setting up many of the game’s potential deaths. The Until Dawn movie makes their existence more complicated, as the Wendigo isn’t just a cursed creature but now the result of too many resurrections into a horrifying new state. Given that there’s no death/rebirth loop in the game, this might have been true in that setting as well, but never directly revealed.

Dr. Hill is also a very different character in the film than he was in the game. While the hallucination version of Hill, who appears to Josh is meant to showcase how unstable he’s become, Hill wasn’t necessarily portrayed as a villain in these scenes. If anything, he offered condemnation for how Josh’s fear consumed him and transformed him into a potential killer and, depending on the ending of the game, a literal monster. Dr. Hill gains a much more nefarious edge in the aftermath of the film, as it suggests his “therapy” for Josh was more manipulative.

A file on Josh can be spotted in Until Dawn‘s climactic scene between Clover and Hill, suggesting he’s already been at work monitoring or even already giving “therapy” to the young man. It seems that Hill’s interest in Josh stemmed entirely from his ability to be defined by fear and to spread it to others, which fits with the research he’s conducting on the effect of horror on the human psyche (and body) in the film. It changes Hill’s motivations in the game and suggests this was the true cause of the chaos that ensued in that тιтle.

How Until Dawn’s Movie Being A Prequel Changes The Original Video Game

Dr. Hill Is Now Until Dawn’s True Big Bad

Until Dawn works as a prequel to the game of the same name, and introduces some interesting tweaks to the lore as a result. The game didn’t portray Hill as anything more than a thematic guide for the player and a hallucination for Josh. However, Hill’s interactions with Clover indicate that Hill targeted Josh as he had focused on others in the past. It seems that Hill is trying to break people to witness what happens afterwards, giving his interactions with Josh in the game a far darker edge in retrospect.

This effectively makes Hill into the overarching villain of the Until Dawn story, as opposed to any specific monster or curse. Hill instead pushes people into the kind of situations that can either break them or traumatize them, hoping to push them to follow his directives — such as accepting the idea that someone has to die for the group to escape. Hill is proven to be lying at the end of the film, indicating that his conversations with Clover and Josh aren’t wholly for their own benefit and could easily be manipulations as part of his studies.

Until Dawn choosing not to be a direct adaptation of the game it’s based on makes a certain amount of sense. Many successful video game adaptations have been taking inspiration from the games while remixing the concepts into new stories, and Until Dawn finds a way to infuse its general love for horror with some interesting ret-cons to the world of the game. It’s an interesting way to connect the two versions of Until Dawn and establish the true villain of the story.