The Safe Room

The Safe Room
The group confers within the safe room.
Type	Room
Appearances	Chapter 5 Chapter 7 (Determinant) Chapter 8
Location	Old Hotel, Alberta, Canada
Visited By	Ashley Chris (Determinant) Emily (Determinant) Mike Sam The Psycho

“	This is the safe room, Em!	”
	— Mike

The Safe Room is an area within the Old Hotel, previously used as the Psycho’s surveillance room.

History

This is a room within the now-derelict Blackwood Pines Hotel. Josh, setting up monitors and a large pinboard, utilized it as his center of operations before it was eventually used by Mike, Chris, Sam, Ashley, and Emily as a safe room.

Layout

The room has a desk stacked with monitors and a laptop at one end with a board bearing photos and maps on the adjacent wall. Other items such as binders, books, and tape players have been stored in the room.

It is next to the room in which Chris and Ashley face the second saw trap.

Events of Until Dawn

Initially, Josh, as the Psycho, used this room as a place from which to watch his camera feeds. Here, he can be seen watching Emily and Matt as they leave the lodge, and he remotely locks the door behind them. Later, after escaping the Psycho and passing through a workshop area, Sam can peer through a window and see him checking on his monitors.

After the Stranger appears and tells the protagonists about the curse of the Wendigo, he suggests finding a secure place to hide. Because of this, the room is repurposed as a safe room and is next seen after Chris’ chase, when he arrives there with Mike and Ashley, or—if he is killed—Mike and Ashley arrive alone.

In the safe room, a series of conflicts take place. Sam, Mike, and possibly Emily debate what the next course of action is while they observe the Stranger’s things. Eventually, Mike declares that Josh must have the key to the cable car and that he wants to go to the mines to get it so that the group will not be sitting ducks. However, if Emily is alive and has been bitten, this discussion is diverted when Ashley notices the bite and begins the panic. While Mike and Ashley argue that the bite will turn Emily into a Wendigo, and that she needs to leave the safe room, Sam questions whether the bite really is infectious. If he is alive, Chris will quietly suggest that he doesn’t want Emily to stay if she may turn into a Wendigo, as he had just escaped one. Emily initially argues against Mike’s insistence that she leave voluntarily and claims that he only wants to make himself feel better about sending her to her death. However, she begins to get more anxious as she realizes that most of the room is against her.

Eventually, Mike will threaten to shoot Emily. If he does, Emily will die slumped up against the pinboard. After Mike decides whether or not to fire, a number of short conversations can happen. If Emily is alive, she will lament the death of the Stranger, saying she thought he would help them, and Sam will ask the group to remain tough. If Emily is dead and Chris is alive, Sam will check on Chris and ask him about the Stranger and the Wendigo. If both Chris and Emily are dead, Sam will become overwhelmed by the situation and curse.

Ashley will pick up The Stranger's Journal and see that the bites were not infectious. She may then hide this information from the others or reveal the truth. If Emily is dead and Ashley reveals the truth, Chris will comfort Ashley and say what happened isn’t her fault. If Emily is alive and the truth is revealed, she will state that Ashley was going to let Mike shoot, and she will slap Ashley.

Eventually, Sam will become alarmed while reading the Stranger’s journal and have the others follow her to help Mike, and they all leave the safe room behind.

Trivia

• The monitors show the following:
  • The inside of the cable car station.
  • The bathroom tub.
  • The hallway before the lodge’s back door, where there is a painting of an indigenous man on the wall.
  • The tunnel between the safe room and the mines.
  • The kitchen of the old hotel.
  • The gate outside the lodge.
    • This is shown in chapter five.
  • The stairs outside the lodge.
    • This is shown in chapters seven and eight.
• The monitors appear in therapy sessions with Dr. Hill, as well as Hill's office in the Until Dawn film.
• The pinboard shows the following:
  • Blueprints of the lodge.
  • An old map of the mountain.
  • A strip of film showing Mike, Ashley, and Jessica.
  • Many photographs of individual characters.
  • Two PS3 beta surveillance images of “Josh” bound in chains and with a bag over his head.
  • Three prototype surveillance images of bridges on the path to the guest cabin, including ones featuring Mike and Jessica.
  • A prototype surveillance image of Chris in the shed.
  • A photo of the outside of the guest cabin.
  • An aerial shot of a building circled in red.
  • A photo of the lodge balcony.
  • A calendar.
• The board is not the same between the original game and the remake. The changes are as follows:
  • A prototype photo of Emily is replaced with a photo of Chris.
  • A prototype photo of Sam is replaced by a photo of Mike.
  • A picture of Matt is replaced by a photo of Chris.
  • A prototype photo of Jessica is replaced by a photo of Ashley.
  • The year on the calendar in the original game was 2015, the year during which the story takes place. In the remake, it is 2013, the year in the PlayStation 3 prototype.
• The map of Mount Madahee comes from the PlayStation 3 version of the game and has a number of interesting details on it:
  • There's an area labeled "hang shack" which is referring to the shed.
    • It is labeled with an image of Chris in the prototype shed.
    • Will Byles, the game's director, has referred to the shed as "the hanging shed."
      • This shed is also called "the hanging shed" in the game's files.
  • An image of Jessica and Mike on a bridge, with a sticky note saying "Camera 5," is pinned on the map as though it is from an odd area in the corner, far out of the way.
  • A note indicates there's CCTV in, outside, or near the guest cabin.
  • A note saying "hideout" is between the lodge and the shed and to the left.
  • There is an arrow going from the cable car to the Blackwood Pines Hotel with the words "lodge — secret passage" written next to it.
  • The notes "setup 1" and "setup 2" seem to be referring to the cable car station and the shed.
    • Josh had trashed the cable car station and set up the buzzsaw trap in the shed.
    • On Josh's workshop board, there is also a sketch of a gibbet labeled "setup 3" – a set-up not seen in the actual game.

Gallery

The full board as it appears in the remake.

CCTV image of Chris solving the photo puzzle in the prototype.

CCTV image of Mike and Jessica on a bridge.

A closeup of the map.

A look at the 2015 pinboard (1).

A look at the 2015 pinboard (2).

A close-up of a blueprint and the photo strip.

The monitors in the safe room

The Psycho remotely observes Emily and Matt.