Director: Jeff Wadlow
Writer: Jillian Jacobs and Michael Reisz
Cast: Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, Violett Beane and Sophia Ali
Celebrating their last night of Spring Break, a group of friends engages in an innocent game of Truth or Dare. Their fun takes a creepy turn as the game morphs into a life or death struggle. Armed with only their wits, the friends are forced to play the game that pits them against one another or face a grisly death.
Truth or Dare wants to be the love child of Scream and Final Destination. Unfortunately, it isn’t scary or entertaining enough to be compared to either. Instead, it’s the overgrown bastard of Goosebumps and Scary Movie. This should have gone directly to video, not Blu-ray or DVD, but straight to VHS. This is 99 cent bin at Blockbuster 2017 bad. We wanted to like this movie. In fact, we were so creeped out by the trailer we didn’t want to watch alone. It’s our own fault for having such high expectations. Not only is it not scary, the script, the acting, and the plot holes are just plain disrespectful. The film starts with goody two shoes Olivia (Hale) posting on her wholesome YouTube channel about charity works when her slutty BFF storms in and forces her to come to Mexico for Spring Break. They have a few fun-filled days with friends before being introduced to the deadly game. The reveal is a clumsy mess. The always good, Olivia meets a handsome stranger at a bar and then lures the group to an abandoned church for a game of Truth or Dare. Where the stranger reveals the nature of the game and begins to walk away. Just before he makes it to the door Olivia catches up and demands an explanation, the creep reveals the game rules to Olivia, who says nothing to her friends until she’s forced to. The game pauses long enough for the friends to get back to campus where Truth or Dare signs start revealing themselves. For reasons unknown and never explained, Olivia links the occurrences to the game quickly and sets off to convince the others. No one believes, of course, until they have their turns then they all set out to figure out how to stop it. These college kids who were dumb enough to follow a stranger to an abandoned building together become smart enough to find a fugitive killer and the source of the cursed game with just a little help from Google and social media.
Oddly enough, had they done the origin story first, Truth or Dare could have been the half-baked sequel. The origin story has everything you’d want in a creepy horror movie. A scary church, a lecherous priest, possession, revenge, and a bad ass human sacrifice by a nun. The nun in our dream prequel is the mute old Mexican woman in this film that reveals the source of the curse. Somehow this undereducated traumatized nun writes in perfect English for our wide-eyed heroine Olivia.
We wish we could say the game teaches lessons of morality and honesty among friends, but it doesn’t its just a cruel, mildly amusing, farce perpetuated by a blood lusting demon. All the douche characters get gruesome deaths like a pen to the eye and a broken neck. The nice ones get shot, one by a cop the other by a deranged player. Then there’s the savior who sacrifices themselves for the greater good leaving a survivor or two. The characters are underdeveloped with pointlessly complicated issues. The writers took every horror cliché and replaced it with some unnecessary drama. Instead of a classic stoner, they opted for a drug dealer who sells prescriptions to college kids. Instead of including a loner from an abusive home being forced to face their abuser, they gave us a closeted homosexual who had to reveal himself to his loving and accepting father. Lastly, they swapped out the prerequisite sassy street-smart black friend for two Asians and a Latino, all of which die for the pretty white girl who started this mess. If you dare to waste 90 minutes watching this movie see it with a dark comedy in mind. This film isn’t a horror or a thriller and that’s the Truth.
Truth or Dare is in theaters Friday, the 13th!