First things first, following a string of superior genre films, including The Visit, Get Out, Split and Happy Death Day, it’s almost bittersweet to report that Blumhouse Productions isn’t impervious to the occasional stumble.
Not that Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare is a bad movie, per se. It’s good, and totally watchable; it’s just not great to the point of deserving the kind of big opening weekend that the company's other recent films have enjoyed.
While there’s much to praise in the film’s approach to a well-worn premise — young adults dabble in a game laced with supernatural menace — my biggest complaint comes from Truth or Dare trying to have it both ways. It wants to be scary as hell, but it limits itself in just how far it's willing to go for true shock value.
If this was an entry in the Final Destination franchise, at least horror fans would know to expect some serious gore and a slew of ridiculously inventive kills. But Blumhouse has not made a hard-R scarefest since 2012’s Sinister.
Last year’s Happy Death Day shattered expectations by focusing more on its characters and making the most of its smart “John Hughes meets Groundhog Day in Hell” premise. It didn’t need an abundance of blood because it was so refreshingly entertaining.
Truth or Dare noticeably lacks that film’s humor, but it’s also devoid of any sharp edges. The camera cuts away from most of the on-screen deaths or frames those moments in such a way as to minimize the madness. This is a movie about people experiencing a brutal death immediately after sharing or acting out on their worst and most well-kept secrets. It demands a provocateur behind the camera to push for a visual style that compliments and elevates its Grand Guignol proceedings.
Director Jeff Wadlow is one of four credited screenwriters, which seems like a lot of cooks in a small kitchen. And while Wadlow previously wrote and directed Kick-Ass 2 (which was a solid sequel), he also gave us the Kevin James clunker, True Memoirs of an International Assassin, and 2005’s Cry Wolf, which was his first foray into horror and a mediocre effort at best.
Here’s the basic gist of Truth or Dare: Good girl Olivia (Lucy Hale, Pretty Little Liars) is bullied into taking one last college Spring Break by her ride-or-die bestie Markie (Violett Beane). While in Mexico, Lucy meets scruffy Carter (Landon Liboiron), who convinces her and her friends to sneak off to an abandoned seaside church to play a game of Truth or Dare. It’s all fun until Carter informs them that the game is real, and if they refuse to keep playing, they will die. Of course, no one believes him until the gang returns to California and weirdness immediately starts happening.
When Truth or Dare gets it right, it does so with a refreshing lack of irony.
In most movies like this, the group of young victims fall prey to dumb decisions and a staunch refusal to accept that something supernatural may be occurring. Here, Olivia, Markie, her boyfriend Luca (Tyler Posey, MTV’s Teen Wolf) and their friends Penelope (Sophia Ali), Tyson (Nolan Gerard Funk) and Brad (Hayden Szeto) mostly accept without question that some freaky shite is happening.
The game allows for some surprisingly intense revelations — unrequited crushes, a troubling secret about a parent’s suicide — that add extra oomph to the life-or-death consequences. And the backstory, how this version of Truth or Dare became the devil’s roulette, is well-thought out and fully explained.
Anyone who has seen the omnipresent marketing ads knows that the people swept up in the game become grossly disfigured with an uber-creepy grin and big saucer-sized eyes. That unsettling visual effect still packs a wallop throughout.
That’s the main reason my wife and my Creative Loafing editor both said, "Oh hell no!" about braving a dark theater to watch Truth or Dare (editor's note: I actually used much stronger language).
And the ending is both satisfying and smartly teased early on.
For Blumhouse, success has brought a sense of enhanced audience expectations. It’s not a bad problem for a film production company to have, but it can be a high bar to clear.
Is that goodwill enough to help a movie that’s just good, but not great, reap a box office windfall, especially when there are better, more original horror movies (A Quiet Place) already crowding the multiplex?
Truth? Probably.
But I wouldn’t risk a dare to prove it.
This article appears in Apr 12-19, 2018.