Most of us as kids were into playing games. Not so much the video game kind as there were few outside the Atari 2600. No, the kind I’m talking about are the Red-Light, Green-Light, Hide-n-Seek, or the classic Tag. And as it always sucked being “it” in a game of tag things would go to a new level as we aged and graduated to games like Spin the Bottle or Truth or Dare. Now while you may have good or bad memories about the games of Truth or Dare in some dark room, I bet you never thought this game would make a good horror movie one day, or maybe to tell the truth, you did.
I feel that the writers on Blumhouse’s latest horror movie entry had that idea as they give us a demonic version of the game Truth or Dare. Olivia (Lucy Hale) is a good girl gone humanitarian as she plans to spend her spring break building houses for the less fortunate. Lucky for her she has a friend in Markie (Violett Beane) to keep her from being good and guilts her into ditching the home building for a week in Mexico instead. So together they tag along with Lucas ( Tyler Posey), Penelope (Sophia Ali), Tyson (Nolan Gerard Funk), and Brad (Hayden Szeto) who pile in a car and party their way through the week. When the last night arrives, the group doesn’t want it to end as Olivia meets a guy in Carter (Landon Liboiron) who says he has a place to keep the party going. That place turns out to be an old church and the party he is talking about is a game of Truth or Dare that you can’t stop playing or you will die. So it is up to Olivia and her friends to keep playing all while trying to figure out a way to beat the game for good.
While having Blumhouse in front of your movie can usually give me excited feelings, as they go low budget but make up with clever premises and creepy stories. I did not get those feelings going into this one. To me it had a cheesy kind of feel to it and even after thinking about it more, that’s being kind. The team of writers never really give you a likable character to latch on to, and sadly that’s not the only thing “Truth or Dare” has working against it. By going the PG-13 route they took out the teeth and scare factors that could have made this a little better, which would have been them taking the more graphic route. Instead they played it safe and painted by the numbers and stayed inside the lines for a lame and forgettable horror borefest. All audiences will be left with is the worst game of Truth or Dare ever and an ending to the film that feels fitting for how bad the rest of it is. This was a hard one to sit through and I wouldn’t want to do it ever again, and if you dared me, I would tell you the truth, to watch “It Follows” if you want a far superior version of this type of horror that is done right.
