Aayush Sharma
Helmed by David F. Sandberg, ‘Until Dawn‘ is a survival horror drama film that chronicles the journey of young men and women who find themselves in the middle of a creepy experiment in Glore Valley. Clover (Ella Rubin) and her friends are on a journey to find the truth about the disappearance of Clover’s sister, Melanie. After they receive a tip from the local coffee shop owner, they make their way to Glore Valley, where people have been mysteriously vanishing. As they arrive there, they find out that the place is quite peculiar and fairly deserted. When the group is forced to spend a night at the Welcome Center in the valley, they come face-to-face with several adverse situations.
Horrifyingly enough, every time they die inside the house, they are revived. Thus, they realize that they are in a time loop and must find a way to survive the night and escape this ghost town. A darkness has long haunted the valley, and as the group finds the truth about their captivity, they realize they are a part of something sinister. Nevertheless, they decide to fight for their survival. Yet, it’s not an easy feat because the entire town is a deadly playground that stops the group from escaping. Thus, the Glore Valley becomes an important character of the film.
Glore Valley is a Fictional Pennsylvanian Town Brought to Life in the Budapest Metropolitan Area
While it is a core part of the narrative, Glore Valley is a fictional town, and there’s no place with that name in Pennsylvania. However, that doesn’t mean that this place has never been used in the world of pop culture. The horror film, ‘Until Dawn,’ is based on the 2015 video game of the same name, which features Glore Valley as the primary location. It is an abandoned mining town in Pennsylvania that became a ghost town after a mining accident and ensuing experimentation on the survivors. Yet, the setting of the movie is completely different from what is seen in the game. While the game mainly takes place in the region of Blackwood Mountain, the movie changes the location to Glore Valley, which also appears in the video game. However, to create a location that looked apt for the movie’s narrative, director David F. Sandberg and his crew shot extensively in the remote areas of Budapest, Hungary. The real-life location perfectly mirrored the movie’s eerie atmosphere.
Unlike many other films that use the beauty of Budapest’s picturesque locations to enhance the viewing experience, ‘Until Dawn’ doesn’t feature any monumental buildings in the background. The decision not to include those landmarks in the movie makes sense because the horror flick is set in a single town, and the characters are unable to leave the Welcome Center. Hence, the filmmakers didn’t have to wander the city to find attractive places. Instead, they did all the hard work to construct the sets that would represent the real structure of a Welcome Center. However, they constructed the sets in a way that gave freedom to the cast and crew so that the filming could happen as efficiently as possible. To showcase the Welcome Center, the production designer, Jennifer Spence, and her team erected a Victorian-style house on the grounds of an abandoned orphanage at Fót village in the Budapest Metropolitan Area. Moreover, they created a graffiti-filled house on the same premises. Alternatively, all the interior shots in the movie are filmed in Origo Studios, which is situated at 1151 Budapest in Felsőkert utca 9. On the other hand, all the tunnel scenes featured in ‘Until Dawn’ are shot inside the Kőbánya cellar system, which is located at 1105 Budapest in Bánya u. 37.
The aforementioned cellar system is an extensive mesh of limestone tunnels that spans over fifty acres. While talking about shooting in Budapest in an interview with Macabre Daily, Sandberg noted that shooting in Budapest turned out to be advantageous for them because it featured a lot of creepy places that seemed perfect for the film. He said, “Getting this type of production value for free is a real plus. These places were already creepy, and some were hundreds of years old, so they were dark, damp, and cold. This made things miserable for the actors but great for the overall film, but you can see their breath when they talk; it was so cold.” The decision to recreate Glore Valley in the Budapest Metropolitan Area proved to be a great decision, both visually and thematically. The remote location and the sets constructed on it brought an authentic sense of dread to the screen. Moreover, the production team left no stone unturned to use the area’s quietness to add an unsettling realism to the film’s terrifying narrative. Glore Valley is much more than just a location in the fictionalized film. It’s a character in itself and comes forward with its own apprehensions, often highlighting the fact that it is nearly impossible to escape the dreadful place.
Read More: Where Was Until Dawn (2025) Filmed?
