Am I wrong in assuming that girls and boys have different approaches to a game of Truth or Dare? I feel like a group of girls play Truth or Dare? to gain social leverage over the one stupid enough to play without a poker face while a group of boys would simply turn the game into a series of moronic Youtube videos. Boys and girls together? Giggle giggle titter titter. That seems like a situation that could lead to fun, but never really does, much like the film Truth or Dare.
Several collegians are on Spring Break in Mexico. This is already wrong, isn’t it? College kids don’t play Truth or Dare; they don’t need to – just add a keg and they will do whatever ill-advised admission, sexual act, or embarrassing parlor trick the game naturally requires. An outsider to the group, Carter (Landon Liboiron), suckers the gang into midnight at the broken down church where half the found-footage films are set. Instead of finding footage, Carter gets the group to start playing Truth or Dare. Except this version is lethal; fail to tell the truth or do the dare, and some random demon gets to assume your body, put on a joker face, and commit suicide (the demon lives, you don’t).
Now lemme interject here – this is stupid. The biggest problem with the Truth or Dare film is the age group. Once you get to an age where revealing a crush will not haunt your school life forever, truth is the only option and it’s a boring one – what have you done at age 19 that will haunt you for the rest of your life? Clearly, it’s not impossible to have skeletons before you leave college, but the difference between the hidden secrets of a teenager and the hidden secrets of, say, a fortysomething are likely the difference between the Beatles and Beatlemania.
When Olivia (Lucy Hale) returns back to school, she starts seeing the words “Truth or Dare?” in odd places. In the library, all the patrons surround her while shouting the question and she’s forced to choose “Truth” and admit that her career is going nowhere now that “Pretty Little Liars” is done. Later, an
actor fails the PLL challenge and the demon makes sure his on-screen career matches his off-screen career.
Oh, wait. Is this a remake? Is Madonna the demon?
A traditional game of Truth or Dare is an exercise for adolescents to discover the joy of peer pressure; it grows old once girls start wielding genuine social power and get peers to do awkward things without the need of an artificial construct. Hence, here you’ve got mixed-matched age groups – the horror crowd is older than the “titter titter hee hee” crowd. So I’m not exactly sure who this film is supposed to be for. My niece totally wanted to go, but at her pre-pubescent age, she really wants to play Truth or Dare, not see a horror movie about other kids playing Truth or Dare. I think. This is an overwhelming screenplay issue – the target audience simply isn’t old enough to get all the shock a true horror might offer.
For one request, I would not cave
Is my life now in need of a save?
No need to slay
For a fail to obey
Nobody dared that I write a rave
Rated PG-13,100 Minutes
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Writer: Jillian Jacobs, Michael Reisz, Christopher Roach, Jeff Wadlow
Genre: Lethal childishness
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: My nine-year-old niece
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The person who has to tell the nine-year-old she’s not old enough to see the film
