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I used to love video games. My family got an Atari 2600 practically as it came on the market. Give me a fistload of tokens and set me free in an arcade and I was a happy camper. I even worked in an arcade for a time in the 90s. I participated in the evolution from Atari to Intellivision to ColecoVision to NES to Sega to SNES to the PlayStation revolution.My participation in gaming systems pretty much ended with the PS2. Sure, I’ve done the occasional Mario Party with friends here and there, but mostly I just keep my pop culture eye on video gaming from afar. I don’t have the time needed to devote to games, anymore.Though, when I see some of the horror-themed games out there, I get that itchy button finger. They’ve come such a long way and look so impressive, so cinematic. It’s no wonder why they get adapted to film and have more successfully made that leap than their counterparts from other genres. Which is why, without really knowing the game, I decided to check out Until Dawn.Clover (Ella Ribin) and her friends Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A’zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo) and Abel (Belmont Cameli) are on a trek to find Clover’s sister Melanie (Maia Mitchell). She has been missing for over a year, and Clover wants some answers. They find their way to the gas station in Melanie’s last video message, where the attendant (Peter Stormare) directs them to an area up the road, Glore Valley, where a lot of people have gone missing.There they find a Welcome Center for the town, but nothing else. The building is abandoned, but it has one stands out feature: A creepy clock with an hourglass instead of hands. Once the sun goes down, the group finds themselves stuck in a time loop where they all get savagely murdered, then the hourglass resets and they come back to life. In order to get free, they need to find a way to stop the loop. One hitch: They only have limited number of resets.After swimming in the superhero pool with the two Shazam! movies, director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation) returns to his genre roots, and Until Dawn is a smart and entertaining horror outing, but somehow simultaneously delivers the goods while feeling like something is missing.At first, I was afraid I hadn’t checked the rating and this was one of those movies that started out as R-rated, but was cut down to a PG-13 so it could get a wider audience. That is never a good sign for a horror flick. Rest assured, this is a very hard R, which is evident during the first killing spree.Yet, it’s also this first instance of murder set pieces that left me oddly conflicted about Until Dawn. The film feels like it lacks scenes or, more accurately, moments within scenes. While some of the deaths go hard with the gore effects—watch out for the bathroom scene—others feel like something was left on the proverbial cutting room floor (we really need a new, Digital Age phrase for this).Some of the effects stand out and are lingered upon as a good, gory, slasher-style horror should. Other times, the cut away from the effect feels too quick, like it could’ve had a few seconds more screen time. Still others aren’t even shown on screen at all. We see the aftermath, or don’t even see the kill, just have to assume the character died because everything resets.Maybe we’ll get the usual “Director’s Cut” when it comes out on disc and streaming, but I couldn’t help, as a horror fan and a gorehound, feeling the tiniest bit underwhelmed by the whole affair, even though I also felt well entertained.It’s fun enough for me to recommend, but still…there’s something I can’t put my finger on about it that doesn’t sit well with me.