‘Until Dawn’ Director David F. Sandberg Breaks Down the Film’s Practical Effects [Video]

Always a valuable resource for behind-the-scenes insight, director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle Creation) made a video detailing his approach to practical effects in Until Dawn.

A must-watch for aspiring filmmakers, the video plays like an eight-minute film class on special effects that includes test foots he shot with his wife and producing partner Lotta Losten.

It also teases a few of the movie’s in-camera gore gags, including a worm burrowing into a face, a pickax stab through the chest, a head repeatedly smashed on the ground, and a leg amputation.

Applied Arts FX Studio (Hereditary, Thanksgiving) handled the practical effects in the film, with visual effects by UPP (Blade Runner 2049, All Quiet on the Western Front).

Watch the big screen get bloody when Until Dawn opens on April 25 from Sony Pictures.

Based on Supermassive Games’ survival horror video game, Blair Butler (Hell Fest, The Invitation) and Gary Dauberman (It, Annabelle) penned the script.

One year after her sister mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.

Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again — only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.

Ella Rubin (The Idea of You), ​Michael Cimino (Annabelle Comes Home), ​Odessa A’zion (Hellraiser), ​Ji-young Yoo (Freaky Tales), ​Belmont Cameli (“Saved by the Bell”), ​Maia Mitchell (“The Fosters”), and Peter Stormare (Fargo) star.