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Truth or Dare (2018), PG-13, ★


Truth or dare. Well, I guess I dared myself to watch it. It is a choice. It has producer Jason Blum, who was on a roll because of the awards season with Get Out in the conversation. No, he did not win the Oscar for Best Picture but he was in the conversation during the awards season. In my mind, it was too little too late as people were talking about two other movies and I believe the votes were in for Best Picture. Jason Blum has had a couple of great years as he is known for making a small-budget horror movie and getting a big profit out of that product. Blum will make a profit out of this movie as he is still rolling with his momentum of smaller budget horror movies, however, the quality of the screenplay is a whole different story as this movie unnecessarily gruesome and familiar that I got bored immediately.

College student Olivia Barron (Lucy Hale) is a humanitarian who is promoting for her YouTube channel to encourage people to build homes for the Habitat for Humanity. Her best friend, Markie, asks Olivia if she is going to Mexico with her and the group before they all graduate. The girls join their other friends - Markie's boyfriend Lucas Moreno (Tyler Posey), drug dealer Tyson Curran (Nolan Gerard Funk), his nearly alcoholic girlfriend, Penelope (Sophia Ali) and Brad Chang (Hayden Szeto) as they take the trip, taking pictures and videos on the way.

After a schoolmate named Ronnie (Sam Lerner) and Carter (Landon Liboiron) join the group as they arrive at the abandoned mission. The group sits down and plays the "Truth or Dare" game as the game starts fun then it turns serious as Olivia picks truth as Tyson asks her if Markie knows that she has ever been in love with Lucas. Carter is asked what his intentions are with Olivia and he admits that he is adamant with strangers dying than living. Olivia goes after Carter after he leaves and he tells her that because they are in the game, they have to abide by the rules: tell a lie, you die. Fail to do a dare, you die. Refusing to play and the decision will get you killed.



This is a tepid teen version of a Final Destination movie or a mixed but better movie, Nerve. It is like the screenwriters and/or people in charge are having the characters going through the motions of playing the game. It is familiar, it is not over-the-top and it is not as fun. This movie went forever to the point of incoherence where it is mostly truth or dare in which it turns into "who's next and confess" to the point of whether their confessions will add suspense. It just adds to the point of incoherence and not caring because the characters are uninteresting and one-dimensional. Lucy Hale is fine in her role but I will not remember her much nor the other actors.

Without giving the movie away, the only scene that I loved was the ending as it added bit of creativity and juice that is hungry underneath of what may happened after that decision was made. Director Jeff Wadlow made a sleek-looking but by-the-numbers and generic horror movie that felt more arbitrary and unfocused as the "fun" of the truth-or-dare game has gone along. This movie is a teenage Final Destination without the fun, the characters, the scares and the intelligence. This is a nearly empty horror product that is an exercise of familiar horror scares, if you want to call it that. It is one of the worst movies of 2018.

*


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