Truth or Dare Blu-ray Review + Screen Caps

THE MOVIE — 1.75/5

Dumb teen horror movies have been around for decades and every year there tends to be a few, the latest for 2018 is Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, a movie that’s bad yes but also really stupid without very much fun factor let alone anything approaching being scary or even creepy. But being from Blumhouse, it was done on the cheap ($3.5M) and easily made its money back on its opening weekend ($18.7M; $93M global box office).

The so-called plot centers on a group of college-aged friends — Olivia (LUCY HALE), Lucas (TYLER POSEY), Markie (VIOLETT BEANE), Brad (HAYDEN SZETO), Tyson (NOLAN GERARD FUNK) and Penelope (SOPHIA ALI) — taking their final spring break trip to Mexico before graduating. After going to a club, and not wanting the party to end, they are invited by Olivia’s newfound friend she met the bar, Carter (LANDON LIBOIRON), to an old abandoned church, where they play a game of “truth or dare”, but this isn’t just any old game, but has deadly consequences as they would eventually find out: Refuse to answer. You die. Choose truth and lie. You die. Choose a dare and don’t complete. You die.

After the trip, each member of the group begins receiving message, be it a person possessed by “The Grinch” or even via text, asking “Truth or Dare?” and whichever they choose, it tends to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets such as Olivia revealing that best friend Markie has been cheating on boyfriend Lucas, whom Olivia has had a crush on. Sounds a bit like a bad episode of Pretty Little Liars… The characters’ turns are determined in the order they went at the church and, they later discover, is actually a game of two truths and a dare, thus they can’t just go with truth every time.

There’s really not much more to the plot or even characters for this movie. On the latter, I can’t place much fault on the actors for being saddled with some stilted and inane dialogue, like Lucy Hale whom I am a fan of and probably was the primary reason I even watched Pretty Little Liars as much as I did. She doesn’t get a whole lot to do, though at least there’s somewhat of a development for her Olivia character, but I’ll get to that in the next spoiler-filled paragraph. The rest of the cast were fine and did the best they could with mostly one-dimensional characters.

And now for some spoilers (so please skip this section if you don’t want to know the ending):

The finale of Truth or Dare finds the remaining characters, including Olivia, with no way to end the game. So, in contrast with an opening hypothetical about saving the world or saving her friends, for which she chose the former, she chose to save her friend and screw over the world by posting a video about the game thus spreading it across the globe which means potentially millions will die gruesome deaths. Well, that ending sounded awfully familiar when it dawned on me: In Ringers, a college-aged woman posts a video of the ring which then was viewed thousands of times and as we might suspect, many people will die. The difference here is, in Ringers that woman was possessed by the evil spirit of Samara; Olivia on the other hand does it knowing full well of the consequences. I get she loves her best friend and all, but that shit was cold.

End of spoilers.

Anyway, while I can’t say I hated Truth or Dare, it is a pretty lousy supernatural-horror-thriller with nary even a good idea at its core. The script was lousy, the direction under Jeff Wadlow (Cry Wolf, Kick Ass 2) uninspiring though the movie looked good at least, and the performances from an okay cast didn’t get a whole lot to work with. Of course, given its small budget and big box office, and how the film ended, I’m sure a sequel will happen with a new crop of one-dimensional characters and an absurd story that lacks any sense of fun.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.5/5

This release comes with a matted and title-embossed slip cover, inside is a DVD Copy and redemption code for the Digital HD copy.

Included is the Unrated Cut (1:40:32) and is only 31 seconds longer, one that was extended was the sex scene which involved more thrusting, not sure about any other scenes that were affected.

Audio Commentary – Co-Writer/Director Jeff Wadlow and Actress Lucy Hale sit down for something that’s a bit more entertaining than overly informative, but honestly, not sure how much more you need to glean from a story like this.

Game On: The Making of Truth or Dare (6:49; HD) – This short EPK-like featurette provides some behind-the-scenes footage along with on-set interviews by members of the cast and crew talking about the “plot”.

Directing the Deaths (4:15; HD) lays out the various death scenes and how it relates to the characters.

Previews – Thoroughbreds, The Strangers: Prey at Night, 7 Days in Entebbe, Unsane, Breaking In

VIDEO – 4.0/5

AUDIO – 4.25/5

OVERALL – 2.5/5

Overall, Truth or Dare was a really dumb movie which would be fine if it had any sense of fun, but like so many of these teen-horror movies that have come before, it lacks any of it. I can’t even recommend this as a rental. The Blu-ray release has good video/audio transfers whilst the bonus features were a bit bland.