Truth Or Dare
Language: English
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Starring: Lucy Hale, Violett Beane, Tyler Posey, Hayden Szeto, Landon Liboiron, and others
Showing at: Cinepolis, CityPride, E-Square, Inox and others
Rating: **
Jeff Wadlow’s Truth Or Dare is the kind of generic horror film in which young people get into all kinds of trouble because of a silly game. The cast is full of teen stereotypes seen in so many films that you can no longer care enough to tell them apart.
Olivia (Lucy Hale) is the good girl who is talked out of volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to hang out with her friends, all of whom have some kind of secret. Her best friend Markie’s (Violett Beane) father has committed suicide, Penelope (Sophia Ali) has a drinking problem, and her boyfriend Tyson (Nolan Gerard Funk) is a drug-peddling medical student; Lucas (Tyler Posey) is Markie’s boyfriend, Brad (Hayden Szeto) is a closet gay and Ronnie (Sam Lerner) is just mixed up.
They go off to Mexico for spring break, to generally drink and make merry. A strange guy Carter (Landon Liboiron), convinces them to party in an abandoned church, gets them playing Truth or Dare, and has them trapped in a hellish nightmare. When they get back to college, they see distorted faces telling them to tell the truth or perform a dare. If they refuse to play, they die. The ones that survive, have to find a way to lift the curse that Carter has passed on to them.
The truth is unpleasant, the dares are dangerous, and the film does sprinkle the scares rather copiously; still it is unable to grip the viewer, because it is too convoluted, gruesome and gets increasingly ridiculous as it goes along. Not one stand-out performance or memorable moment, because in a film as paint-by-the-number as this one, none is even expected.
