“We Wanted Actors Who Were Willing to Go All the Way,” Sandberg and Dauberman on casting for Until Dawn
In Sony Pictures Entertainment's Until Dawn, a twisted survival horror drenched in blood and time loops, director David F. Sandberg and writer-producer Gary Dauberman weren’t just casting actors—they were recruiting survivors. From the get-go, their mission was clear: find performers who could withstand the psychological and physical chaos the script demanded.
“We wanted actors who were willing to go all the way,” Sandberg says. “We knew this was going to be a challenging shoot with many practical effects, and that the actors would have to, for example, crawl through dirt, be covered in blood, and scream endlessly.”
The result? A cast that was game for anything—and everything. Ella Rubin, who plays central protagonist Clover, endured bear traps, blood sprays, and being dragged across the ground.
“Ella, like the rest of the cast, always had to go full on,” adds producer Lotta Losten. “When you’re dying repeatedly, it’s not going to be pretty. Ella has this raw and magical way of capturing Clover’s horrors.”
Rubin herself called the physically demanding role “exciting and kind of delicious.” She continues, “There’s no way to rein it in when your character is constantly in a life and death situation, and you’re literally being chased by a monster with an axe!”
Sandberg’s bar for commitment didn’t stop there. Michael Cimino swung knives with such intensity they had to ask him to dial it back. Meanwhile, Ji-young Yoo turned in what Losten dubbed “the most brutal self-tape I’ve ever seen,” fully embodying a psychic whose body becomes a host for dozens of trapped souls. “It was amazing to watch Ji-young switch between different personalities and emotions. Her screams are so genuine and filled with terror,” says Sandberg.
This unwavering commitment to authenticity—whether it was blood-slicked stunts or raw emotional breakdowns—was core to the filmmakers’ vision. For Until Dawn, horror had to feel real, brutal, and unrelenting. And they found the actors who could go there.
_Until Dawn releases in Indian theatres in Hindi and English on April 25th, 2025._
