Gary Wolcott of the Tri-City Herald calls it “an embarrassment.” David Edelstein at Vulture asserts the film is “especially lame.” Charlotte O’Sullivan in London says “it’s mostly pants.” With a screaming 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, 3/4 adults agree: Truth or Dare is bad.
The most fun thing about Truth or Dare is that it is not fun. A main character notes the titular game is “for kids.” So, why is everyone dying?
It’s spring break and Olivia, like any USC senior, just wants to build houses with Habitat for Humanity. She chronicles her life on a YouTube channel (popularity unknown) and at the film’s start she’s detailing all the sexy charity she intends to do when she’s interrupted by Markie, her best friend, who pushes a change of plans via friendly emotional manipulation and light identity theft.
The currency of Truth or Dare is largely in stereotypes. Olivia is a typical-to-film, quietly suffering brunette; a pushover, but a hot one. Markie is flighty and reckless after the loss of her father. She constantly cheats on her boyfriend, Lucas, a fine person aside from his latent, reciprocated, crush on Olivia. Filling out the rest of the friend group is Penelope (beautiful, burgeoning alcoholic), Tyson (rich, lacks affect), Brad (stable, gay), and Ronnie (utterly disposable).
The crew heads to Mexico for the last ever time they will have fun before, as Markie presciently states, “real life” sets in. On their last night, Olivia meets Carter, a lone partier, after he defends her from unwarranted, and worse, unfunny, advances from Ronnie. Carter quickly pegs Olivia as “too nice” to which she quietly rebels by agreeing to bring her friends with him to an abandoned church on a cliff.
In a completely-by-the-numbers turn of events the game begins, and it’s not your mom’s “Truth or dare?” it’s a cool “Truth or dare?” with drinking, same-sex lap dances, and moral dilemmas. The friends are restless with Olivia’s uncharacteristically selfish pursuit of an average guy who is not Lucas; the behavior is realistic and unnerving in its obliviousness to the likely countless occasions the situation was reversed. They reach their limit when Carter announces his intentions for bringing Olivia and co. to the church were not all that innocent. He “could tell” she was spineless and in need of male attention, or at the very least, a distraction. In turn, he needed a group of people he didn’t care about dying so he could live. Spring break forever.
Where there used to be little-to no stakes now is only stakes. The game replaces life as they knew it. They are constantly in play and refusal to participate is immediately punished by death. Death! There is also no tricking the game: if two people in a row choose “truth,” the third person must choose “dare.”
The movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel cinematically, nor does it portend to want to. If pressed, the movie might wonder why all the fuss about changing how wheels are. Despite at times seeming willfully uninspired, there is a lesson in Truth or Dare. Whether it means to or not, it examines the repercussions of insufficient boundaries in relationships that have turned toxic.
The game exploits everyone’s emotional failings, but bears down especially hard on Olivia and Markie’s friendship. It simultaneously revels and is bored by the obvious entanglement with Lucas because Olivia has another secret that is — compared to what ultimately amounts to an inconvenient crush — much more detrimental.
To suggest, though, that the movie actively seeks to inspire a conversation about living your truth vs. telling the truth is a stretch. The malicious nature of this particular game of “Truth or dare?” stumbles into the argument rather than opens the door on purpose and handles the quandary like a bunch of drunk seniors. The swiftness with which Truth or Dare got rid of characters who waffled or misunderstood the rules is a jarring look at the constraints of “the truth.” It seems irresponsible to not account for the fact that things can be true at the time while not adding to the bigger picture of what is true. All this is to say the truth has never been a game for cowards. Or college students.
