Blumhouse Productions has made itself a powerhouse of thriller and house with such hits as Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister and many others. Some of which have been scientifically proven as the scariest horror movies around. Truth or Dare unfortunately is one of there duds, not for lack of trying.
The Story: Olivia, Lucas and a group of their college friends travel to Mexico for one last getaway before graduation. While there, a stranger convinces one of the students to play a seemingly harmless game of truth or dare with the others. Once the game starts, it awakens something evil — a demon which forces the friends to share dark secrets and confront their deepest fears. The rules are simple but wicked — tell the truth or die, do the dare or die, and if you stop playing, you die. (Google)
To me, movies like these fall under the umbrella of body horror. Like Final Destination, it’s all about what will happen to the victims. What will they be do? What will their bodies endure? Or what will they do to other’s bodies? It’s all about the what-if.
Truth or Dare starts slow. What makes it even slower is the fact that friends comes together in a quest to figure out what’s happening… only to separate as if they didn’t just witness proof some said truth or dare curse. I appreciate the character development, but it’s either contrived attempts to push the story forward. There were just far too many of these moments to keep me interested.
Verdict: There is a film of the same title that was released on Syfy and then Netflix, a year earlier. Characters and plot for Blumhouse’s film appear copy and pasted from this film. Syfy/CineTelFilms’ Truth or Dare received negative reviews but was more successful, because it actually doesn’t hesitate jumping right into, explaining the rules, and really attempting to give the viewer what they want: how far will you go if dared? Plenty of scares/cringe in this one.