Truth or Dare: Film Review

Truth or Dare looked bad anyway, but it’s really done itself a disservice coming out the week after the amazing horror A Quiet Place because it only highlights its weaknesses and makes it look even worse by comparison.

Lucy Hale stars as Olivia who goes on spring break to Mexico with her college buddies including Lucas (Tyler Posey) and Markie (Violett Beane). While there, Olivia meets a guy at a bar and he takes the group to a mission in the middle of nowhere and gets them involved in a game of truth or dare. They are now cursed and they will die if they don’t take their turn, tell the truth and/or do the dare.

I am someone who is easily scared by horror movies, I am such a wuss, so the fact that I wasn’t scared by this at all just goes to show how ineffective it is. It just isn’t scary! I jumped once in the entire movie. The faces are meant to be creepy but they make people laugh rather than feel scared. It relies on a lot of cheap jump scares so it never really builds that tension and suspense.

Afterwards, I was having this debate with my friend who argued that Truth or Dare is a spoof, a deliberately cheesy send-up of the genre, but I don’t think so at all – I think it was genuinely trying to be serious and scary but it was so ridiculous that people couldn’t help but laugh at it. It is just so dumb!

I used to watch Hale in Pretty Little Liars so I have a soft spot for her but even she couldn’t elevate the bad script and a story that struggles to sustain itself for a feature length. The acting is bad (except Hale, always a fan), the dialogue is cheesy AF, the characters are only fleshed out enough for you to know what’s going to be used in the game, and it’s predictable. Don’t even get me started on the ending!

Horror fans: do yourself a favour and watch A Quiet Place instead.

In cinemas now