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"Interactive movie" is a troublesome phrase. Games developers have chased this phantom grail for decades, and the result is usually ambitiously flawed at best, absolute dog muck at worst.David Cage's Quantic Dream studio is one of today's most dedicated proponents of the genre, plugging away with titles like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. The problem with Quantic Dream's efforts is that there's always a disconnect between the highbrow intentions - Heavy Rain opens by giving you a Trophy that says "Thank you for supporting digital drama" - and the often ludicrous pulp storylines that intrude as the games progress. Beyond: Two Souls is a tender story about a young woman struggling to find her place in the world, and also a thriller about a psychic secret agent fighting monsters with her invisible ghost bodyguard.
Until Dawn owes a lot to David Cage's work, but it nimbly avoids the perils of the "pretentious" tag by opting for a genre that is famously resistant to such flourishes. It's a horror game, but that's a term that has been almost as abused and twisted over the years as "interactive movie". Let me use the power of HTML tags to make it clear: this is a horror game. It's a smart, witty B-movie that happens to be told in game form.
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