Truth or Dare | Film Review

Hey Guys x

As you may know, I'm a huge horror fan. And you may also know that I'm a HUGE fan of Blumhouse, the production company behind 'Get Out', 'Happy Death Day', 'Paranormal Activity' etc, 'Insidious' etc, 'The Purge' etc, and 'Split', to name some of my all-time favourite horror movies and franchises. So as you can tell, I have high hopes for everything they put their name to, and this was no different.

It's about a group of college students about to graduate. when they decide to head to Mexico for a final trip together. While there, one of the friends, Olivia, meets a guy who invites her and her friends to play (you guessed it) truth or dare. They agree and play. But then the guy turns out to be a creep. The group think nothing of it and go home, where they find that they haven't stopped playing the game. Except, there are different rules - if you lie, you die. If you refuse a dare, you die. But can the friends find the source of the game before it destroys their lives?

I hate saying this, especially about a Blumhouse horror film, but I didn't enjoy this movie at all.

The premise is a really good one - a childhood game turning into an adult nightmare is something that I would probably tune into no matter the game, just because it's interesting. In fact, I'd love to see a version of this with a different game.

But apart from that, there's not a lot of good things that I can say.

First of all, for some reason, I couldn't connect to any of the characters. Even the main character, Olivia, that is shown as the one that we should feel sorry for, wasn't a relatable character. It felt like she was made to be extremely charitable so that we could forgive her for the shitty things that she does later in the film. And that goes for all the other characters - there wasn't one that I really liked.

Then comes the deaths. Because I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that people die in this film. However, the other characters didn't care about their friends dying. In fact, when the first person died, I didn't even know that they were dead for sure because of the other character's docile reactions to the news. It seemed like, while in some movies death is an awful thing that causes a change within the characters or helps them to find out the truth about the 'killer', in this movie, people were dying for the sake of it, and not even the characters cared. In fact, all they cared about was themselves.

And then there were the truths and dares themselves. Sometimes it was about making someone reveal something that would move the plot forwards, and that was fine. But then there were weird ones that didn't sit right with me at all. For example, a mild spoiler alert, there was a time when two characters were dared to have sex. That was weird, and awkward, and not something that they necessarily wanted to do, and it just felt really wrong. It didn't move the plot forward and I have no idea why someone thought that would be a good idea at all.

Sometimes with films like this, they can be partially saved by the explanation. The reason why this was happening, how it started, and how they could stop it. I hoped that this film would be like that, but it really wasn't. The explanation was feeble, they way they tried to end the game was weird, and the way that it actually ended just became cruel.

Overall, if you're new to the Blumhouse world, please don't judge them based on this film. And if you're not well versed in horror, or you're not that into it, just skip this one, because watching it won't help you in any way. But if it seems like your cup of tea, then give it a try. But just be warned that it has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason.

Lou