REVIEW: Truth or Dare
| 18th April 2018
A group of college kids find their innocent game of truth or dare has turned into a violent fight for survival.
Released: 13th April | Horror/Thriller | Running Time: 1h 40min | Rating: 15
Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare has finally been released (on a Friday 13th no less) and a flood of one-star ratings, bad reviews and an awful reception from the media may be scaring the audience away, but I’m here to fight its corner! An unusual horror film, Truth or Dare focuses on a group of college kids just trying to enjoy spring break, until they are unknowingly roped into a dangerous game of truth or dare. The rules are simple; once you’re in – you’re in, refuse to play and you die, tell the truth or you die, do your dare or you die.
While on the last night of spring break, the group meet an oddly charming lonesome guy, who takes the clique to an eerie and abandoned church mission, where he convinces them to stay and play a game of truth or dare. Once the group start to play, a few truths start some bad blood and tensions start to rise, but it’s not until the gang return to their normal lives in college where things go bad. It turns out the group have been followed by a demon spirit that has attached itself to the game of truth or dare, somehow ‘possessing’ it.
PLL star Lucy Hale, is one of the main characters in Truth or Dare
The film’s unique twist is the weirdly contorted faces; if you have watched the trailer then you’ll understand. When at the most inconvenient time for the players, the demon will show itself in the form of a bystander with a deformed, grimacing face which almost resembles a face filter. The creepy figure will then ask truth or dare, to which then it will give the player either a question or a dare that they don’t particularly want to do. And if you’re thinking ‘well the answer is simple, just pick truth’, well there’s also another tiny little detail to the game; the game will only allow two truths in a row, which leaves the third person forced into doing a dare. This little loop-hole definitely makes the movie a lot more exciting.
Truth or Dare doesn’t wait long before it gives you the satisfying death scenes you’ve been waiting for. Clown of the group, Ronnie (Sam Lerner), accepts a dare to stand on a pool table in a busy student bar and expose himself. Unfortunately for Ronnie, some cruel jibes about the size of his manhood make him chicken out of the dare, which results in something possessing him into deliberately tripping and snapping his neck off the pool table. As far as first deaths go, this gave the film a promising start.
The film definitely gives a ‘Final Destination’ feel, which I found quite refreshing considering how that particular franchise started to lose touch with its first few films; is it just me that is fed up with all the paranormal found footage style films? It seems like in a time where films such as Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring are booming, it’s rare to get anything different, so for me Truth or Dare was a breath of fresh air! For anyone wondering on whether this film is worth a trip to the cinema, take a chance and give it a go, you might be pleasantly surprised!