Truth or Dare (2018)
Given
the current obsession with reboots, revisits and rehashes, it’s strange
that the Final Destination franchise hasn’t cheated death and been
dragged back to life after five films and $665m in the bank. It’s even
stranger given that its legacy has been haunting lesser pretenders in
the past year from the incompetent shlock of Wish Upon to the snappy, if throwaway, slashery of Happy Death Day. Blumhouse, the phenomenally successful company behind the latter (last year also saw them turn Get Out and Split
into global smashes) is now hoping to milk yet more money from the
death-heavy formula with Truth or Dare, a slick college-set horror.
If the gasps and guffaws during my screening are any indication, it’s
likely Blumhouse will have another crowd-pleasing franchise on its
hands (Happy Death Day 2 is on the way, along with sequels to other
Blumhouse hits like The Purge, Insidious and Unfriended) with a nifty,
if derivative, gimmick that lends itself to multiple sequels. Rather
than a disaster-predicting premonition, this time it’s a cursed game
that finds its way into the lives of a group of college kids, enjoying
their final spring break in Mexico.
They’re led by Olivia (the Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale) who is
a brunette, so is therefore earnest and pure; she spends her time
making YouTube videos to help support Habitat for Humanity. Her best
friend, Markie (The Flash star Violett Beane), is blonde and is
therefore rebellious and spends her time cheating on her boyfriend.
Along with their similarly well-drawn friends, they get dragged into
playing a game of Truth or Dare inside a creepy chapel by a handsome
stranger who reveals to them that he only took them there to save
himself. They pass it off as drunken bluster but when they return to
their normal lives, strange things start happening.
Each friend is visited by a demonic presence that overtakes the body
of someone close to them in order to ask the all-important question. The
rules of the game are simple: you choose truth or you choose dare. If
you decide to skip, you die. It took four writers to come up with this.
After a rushed, entirely unscary opening scene and some rather dry
character-setting dialogue, there are some smartly crafted titles that
showcase the group’s vacation through social media posts alone. It’s
indicative of the film that follows, which sees college students
behaving like college students would, forever texting, snapping and
gramming, one of the film’s more believable touches. Slightly less
believable are the specifics that get the group to play a game in a
clearly haunted hill-top building, an awful decision that’s never
justified as anything other than “something that would happen in a
horror movie”. Along with the deadly game, this dim-witted behavior
follows them back home.
Hackneyed horror tropes persist throughout and so does some
crushingly exposition-heavy dialogue (“Since my dad took his own life,
you’ve been my only family”) but it rattles along at a fair lick, never
resting for too long before another nasty surprise. Even most of the
death scenes feel rushed, highlighting the PG-13 rating that the film
has secured, and one does miss the Grand Guignol extravagance of the
Final Destination franchise. Still, the director, Jeff Wadlow, has a
puppyish eagerness to impress, shock and entertain and as silly as the
film might get, it’s never dull.
It’s a clear sign of the times that as well as battling a
supernatural force, the characters also have “issues” to contend with,
sort of like a shallow genre take on 13 Reasons Why. There’s alcoholism,
bereavement, sexual abuse and dealing with one’s sexuality. Most of it
is admirably handled yet the latter subplot leads to one of the film’s
most regrettable lines – “Your dad didn’t know you’re gay? Your ringtone
is Beyoncé!” – which prompted more groans in the screening than any of
the death scenes.
With the remaining characters forced to turn detective in order to
find the origin of the curse, the film starts feeling less like The Ring
and more like Scooby-Doo. But Hale is a committed lead and it all
builds to an audaciously nutty climax. There’s something oddly charming
about the film’s dogged, goofy attempt to earnestly write the rules of a
franchise that will clearly be haunting cinemas, or sleepovers, for
years to come. Truth: it’s watchable trash. Dare: bring back Final
Destination instead.
A harmless game of Truth or Dare among friends turns
deadly when someone -- or something -- begins to punish those who tell a
lie or refuse the dare.
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