Production

Every script has a story behind it. For example, David Lowery came up with the idea for A Ghost Story after moving from a home he became very attached to. Or with Sylvester Stallone, who was poverty-stricken before he became popular and had to sell his dog so he could he could live and the dog could be fed. All while also trying to sell his script for a little movie he wrote called Rocky. A movie which he almost didn’t get the lead role for when the studio picked it up. Both of these stories show just how inspiring and powerful cinema can be. And then there is Truth or Dare. According to the Vulture, co-president of Universal’s worldwide marketing, Michael Moses, was the man who got the green light from Jason Blum himself. He approached Blum with nothing more than three words “truth or dare”. No script, no storyboard, or anyone to direct, just the phrase. Not long after that meeting, Jeff Wadlow met with Blum, who had him pitched to the opening hook, which made the final cut. Wadlow stated that it was essentially a dare to hop on this project, as Blum had just as much as Moses gave him when he talked to Waldow.

Story

After I found Vulture’s article, it was like the entire world made sense to me. What I wouldn’t give to know what other ideas had been pitched but didn’t make the final cut. The story is: a group of friends head to Mexico for Spring Break. They meet a strange man named Carter who tricks them into playing a sadistic game of truth or dare, controlled by a demon who my roommate could only make out as being called Carfax. If the players refuse to act when asked the question, or do not complete the request, they are killed. Will they be able to stop the game before it’s too late? Will all secrets between the group be revealed? Or will Carfax consume them all?

Truth

There is this stigma surrounding PG-13 horror movies. 9 times out of 10, you slap a that kind of a rating on that kind of a genre and you’ve got yourself a pretty tame, paint-by-numbers movie that is almost guaranteed to garner negative reviews universally from critics. Occasionally, there are some decent products, like Insidious, Sixth Sense, or The Ring that do not share in the same hate as many others. Truth or Dare is not apart of those exceptions. Instead of being like 10 Cloverfield Lane where I felt like the rating wasn’t planned but was mere happenstance, Truth or Dare is the exact opposite. It censors itself so it can keep the PG-13 rating, which becomes a distraction because of how often this occurs. To me, nothing ruins a movie more than knowing what its rating is. For example, the opening hook has a character light a random woman on fire, and the only real damage that is shown is the blur of the flames in the foreground. Another example, which is also in the trailer, is when Olivia gives her friend, Markie, a hammer to break her hand with, since that is what Markie was instructed to do from Carfax. We don’t see the impact, Olivia is just rushed to the hospital. We get a small glimpse of her hand that looks like she used nail polish to paint it purple.

About 5 minutes in, I started to get this sense that Truth or Dare was just making stuff up as it went along. For example, every character has their “turn” which is in the same order that they played when in Mexico. Each character will be asked by one of their friends “truth or dare”, who is possessed by Carfax (except…maybe not really? Because only the target character experiences this). If they do not answer, or do not complete the request, they are killed, usually by Carfax possessing the target person and forcing them to commit suicide. Except when that doesn’t happen. And then sometimes it isn’t even one of the friends, but a group of people, or some random homeless man who somehow found his way into the house. Except when it isn’t a person asking at all, and Carfax’s voice comes out of nowhere and the graphite in the wall changes to “truth or dare”, as if the wall became possessed. Oh, and then the question is also burned on the arm of the target character for good measure. Consistency.

If it feels like the writers sat down and created situations that they thought would be “cool”, then you’d be correct. Wadlow stated in the article by the Vulture that this is essentially what happened during development. This makes the movie hard to follow. Comparing the beginning and the end it’s almost as if we’ve entered a completely different film because it writes itself into a corner multiple times and then creates an excuse to get out of it, no matter if it actually makes sense or not. Collectively this makes it a pain to trek through. One idea the group comes up with way too late into the movie is that if they just pick truth then they won’t have to do the dares, which is always very destructive. But then Carfax decides to change the rules so that after every two truths the next person in line must do a dare. Yet, never once was this ever brought up, and is there to raise the tension.

Acting

I can’t tell if the director was wanting to produce a good movie or not. Making stuff up as you go along comes with some serious, movie-breaking repercussions, I feel that this is obvious. It would be an understatement to say that the continuity is bad. Amidst the constant implementation of new rules and deus ex machina’s, the final nail on the coffin is the characters. I felt so distanced from from all of them because the make decisions that are so far outside of a logical realm that it hurts. This is one of those movies that lives inside its own reality and refuses to try and make it accessible and expects the audience to somehow empathize. Never once did I feel even remotely connected or invested to any of these characters. And when Truth or Dare tried to insert real character building moments, it felt so forced that it left no impact. There is not a single believable performance from anyone here. When a character in the friend group is killed off, nobody seems to care. It does not impact them in any way, making me ask “okay…so what?”. If the movie itself doesn’t care, then why should I?

It’s hard to talk about these characters, because they are so flat, that there’s just nothing to talk about. The two that have anything to them is Olivia and Markie, but that’s still not saying much. Olivia is a perfect example of an inconsistent, and fundamentally broken character. There is a decision that she makes at the end that really makes me wonder what the writers were smoking because it comes out of nowhere and tries so hard to be scary that it completely misses the purpose. All thanks to the ending being changed three weeks before shooting. Aside from a hammy performance, Olivia should not have been the main character, that role could have been anybody else in the group. If anyone were to take the main lead, I feel Markie would have been the best choice because of how much the movie lays out for her to be a decent character. Unfortunately, Sharpie is just as broken as Olivia, if not more so. Every time it’s someone’s “turn”, she is so surprised at the outcome, whatever it may be. Her reaction is always the same, get mad and run away, often times for no reason and with no consequence to the story. It is instead wasted time for the sake of just because. This is the only role she plays in the story, Expo is a plot device character. That substance I was talking about comes up in the end of act two. Unfortunately, discussing those darker areas, like the reason for her father’s death, is so poorly written that it does not work and is not earned. It is forced onto the audience, asking them to deal with it when there was no time spent building up to it.

Truth or Dare takes itself too seriously and begins to parody itself and the genre it is representing completely by accident. If Truth or Dare set out to be another satire, like Scream or Cabin in the Woods, then perhaps all would be forgiven. This idea of a nostalgic game of deadly truth or dare being the base of all events is stupid, but would have been a great idea to base a satirical story from. Instead, Truth or Dare thinks that it knows its audience, when, in reality, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Truth or Dare does not know what it wants to be or what it wants to do. This audience this movie is going for confuses me. I feel like this is marketed toward tweens and teens, because of it’s plot and subject material. Yet, all of the main characters are in college. So, maybe this is meant to be nostalgic for college students? What college student would pay to see a PG-13 horror movie? Honestly, who knows.

Final Thoughts

It’s like Truth or Dare was written by a 7 year old who has seen a lot of movies but has no concept of organic storytelling. Often times the cliches it uses don’t fit at all with the movie and were only there for reasons I can only describe as an obligation to the genre. If there were ever a movie that displays everything wrong with modern horror movies, it’s Truth or Dare. And I began to realize just how many cliches there really are with the horror genre. It’s quite the achievement. My roommate and I tried very hard to find anything that was, at the very least, decent about Truth or Dare. And, well, I suppose the DOP knew about framing, so at least I could see things. And the actors looked like they were in college, so that’s also a plus…I guess? Possibly the biggest factor to a rating is is how much I enjoyed it in the end. And boy did I love every minute of Truth or Dare. Seeing a movie get so many things wrong in so many areas crafts this accidental feeling of joy, opposite of what it was meaning to go for. It’s a train wreck from beginning to end with no way to stop it. More than once, Truth or Dare reminded me of Troll 2 with the unpredictable story beats, and playing by one’s own rules only to break them later on. At the very least it isn’t complete anarchy like Troll 2.

Truth or Dare is wildly inconsistent and fundamentally broken in almost every area of filmmaking it touches. Complete with with hammy acting, erratic ideas, poor construction, and weak direction, but most of all, lazy. It utilizes cliches to a degree that is baffling, coincidentally making it not scary in the slightest. Truth or Dare sure is an achievement. It’s comes full circle form being enjoyable, to bad, to enjoyable again, but for reasons outside of what was intended. If you’re a young teen with little understanding to quality filmmaking, or someone who enjoys seeing a movie that is so-bad-it’s-good then I would take the time experience Truth or Dare. Anyone else, this probably is not the movie for you. To quote my roommate one last time, “I now appreciate the art of filmmaking more after seeing Truth or Dare”, which really is something truly special. Will it reach the same grounds as Troll 2, or The Room? It’s doubtful, but I can see it gaining a bit of a cult following later down the road. Truth or Dare gets a 2/10 with a high recommend. You can read the article from The Vulture here.