Truth or Dare
Truth or Dare suffers much from genre identity crisis. It doesn't really know what it wants to say or what it wants from its audience.
Director:
Jeff Wadlow
Lead Cast:
Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, Violett Beane, Hayden Szeto, Sophia Taylor Ali & Landon Liboiron
Screenwriter:
Michael Reisz, Jillian Jacobs, Chris Roach & Jeff Wadlow
Producer:
Jason Blum
Editor:
Sean Albertson
Musical Director:
Matthew Margeson
Genre:
Horror
Cinematographer:
Jacques Jouffret
Distributor:
Universal Pictures
Country:
USA
Running Time:
1hr 40min
Technical assessment: 2.5 ★★✬✩✩
Moral assessment: 2 ★★✩✩✩
CINEMA rating: V18
MTRCB Rating: R13
Markie (Violett Bean) wheedles out her best friend, Olivia (Lucy Hale) into a trip to Mexico along with Lucas (Tyler Posey), Markie’s boyfriend, Penelope Amari (Sophia Taylor) and her boyfriend Tyson Curran and Brad Chang (Hayden Szeto). In Mexico, Olivia meets Ronnie and Carter (Landon Liboiron), and the latter invites Olivia and her friends to join him for drinks at the old dilapidated church. There they are tricked by Carter into a devilish kind of game called “Truth or Dare”. Before Carter leaves them to play the game on their own, he reveals his real intent to Olivia — warning her that the game being real, will haunt them from then on and cautions her not to refuse doing what is asked of them lest they die. In fact, this actually happens to those who are not able to complete a dare, like Ronnie and Giselle. Olivia insists that something can be done to stop this work of the demon as their circle of friends are starting to experience some ghastly incidents. Now, they have to find a way out of the game before it’s too late.
Truth or Dare suffers much from genre identity crisis. It does not really know what it wants to say or what it wants from its audience. It is supposedly a horror flick given the presence of a supernatural force…but the youth dynamics and relational conflicts that have totally nothing to do with the central conflict unnecessarily take away audience’s attention from the supposedly scare and horror elements. The actors deliver well but no one really comes out strong beyond the stereotypical. Visualization is quite weak as well for the film fails to provide visuals for most interesting aspect of the horror. The evil force that comes very weak in visual storytelling turns out as ultimate force in the storyline. However, the plants and payoffs are not that compelling, given that the stakes are too high. In totality Truth or Dare is just as its title suggests — a game, too mundane and shallow to be taken seriously.
At one point, the film tries to be an advocate for truth-telling. You’d better tell the truth or you die. But that same truth does not necessarily save innocent lives so it defeats its very purpose and negates its own theme entirely. Well, perhaps, the devil is the devil so there’s really no way that evil will go for the truth. The film shows that playing games with the devil puts one on the losing end — no one wins the war with the devil. Its main purpose is to bring about destruction and destroy relationships and eventually, the world. But it seems the devil in the film takes the ultimate power — for no greater power is able to defeat it. This makes the entire film a lot more disturbing — with characters having no one to trust, and the evil that stems out of a supposedly sacred space — the film has quite made the evil all entirely powerful. But looking further, the film subtly tackles the inner demons that dwell in the heart of every human being — and it would be a losing battle if one tries to fight it with just one’s human ability. Perhaps that’s the message — humans cannot fight evil alone — he or she needs the help of The One who is divine — the ultimate power whose existence the film denies. Due to the film’s mature theme on the devil and the sexual tensions present in the characters and story conflicts, CINEMA deems the movie as appropriate only for mature audiences. –RPJ
