My History With the Film:
Truth or Dare isn’t a film that popped up on my radar. In fact, I don’t even recall seeing a trailer for it. I first heard about it from a co-worker around Halloween of 2018 and she recommended it.
On one lazy Wednesday night, I decided to give it a shot after finding it streaming on Cinemax and well… I probably could have found something better.
What The Film Is About (Non-Spoiler):
A group of friends begin a game of Truth or Dare that follows them back from vacation.
What I Liked About It:
-I love polished teen horror films, which you may have noticed based on my reviews. It pleases me to see studios still churning out these types of films.
-There is a great scene involving a hammer that will actually make you turn away in disgust. It’s one of those simple horror scenes that just make you cringe.
-I like the plot premise, but I couldn’t help feel like this sort of thing was already done better in Final Destination.
What I Didn’t Like About It:
-The PG-13 rating did this film no favors. I wish I would have seen an unrated cut. It lacked gore and on screen deaths, which would have been fine if the plot was better. I read somewhere that the filmmakers tried to go the Scream route with a solid plot that didn’t need the gore, but they failed. This film needed the gore, badly because the plot felt thrown together.
-None of the characters were likeable. While watching this movie you have nothing invested in any of them, and that’s fine in a slasher (or Final Destination) where you want to see them die, but in this film you didn’t have a great antagonist knocking them off one by one.
-The logic by most of the main cast was shaky at best. The way they choose to play the game and reveal secrets will almost give you a headache. It was obvious that someone needed to spend a little more time on the script.
-The ending is incredibly dumb.
Additional Notes:
-The actor’s faces were manipulated with CGI to achieve the meaning grin. It was nick named the William Dafoe grin.
-Director Jeff Wadlow pitched a title and opening sequence to Jason Blum and got him to sign off on the film.
-Jeff Wadlow was inspired by Snapchat filters to create the face altering grin.
-Made $85+ million dollars on a $3.5 million dollar budget.
Notable Horror Connections:
-Director Jeff Wadlow previously helmed the underrated Cry_Wolf from 2005.
-Lucy Hale (Olivia) was in Scream 4.
-Tyler Posey (Lucas) was in the Scream TV Series and the upcoming The Lost Boys TV Series.
-Landon Liboiron (Carter) was in Hemlock Grove and R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour.
Rating:
Truth or Dare was a miss for Blumhouse. It’s not a good movie. The plot is weak, the ending is even weaker, and it lacked any true dread or horror. The cast did the best with what they were offered, but sadly that wasn’t much. The characters are all unlikeable and you’ll find yourself rooting for the end credits to come. This film needed a better script and an R rating.
I’d rate Truth or Dare a two out of five and say skip it.