TRUTH OR DARE REVIEW

There are some movies that you go into and you just kind of know what you are going to get from it.  I don't like to have a lot of expectations going into a film, good or bad, but experience and human nature sometimes leaves me no choice.  Such was the case with Truth or Dare.  I didn't expect a lot, obviously, but what I hoped I would get from this was a decent and fun guilty pleasure type of film.

 

Truth or dare is pretty much your typical college student horror movie fare.  A group of friends get drunk.  They play truth or dare.  The game turns out to be cursed.  You know the drill. 

This movie turned out to be pretty entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons.  It is the finest example of unintentional hilarity that I have seen in quite some time.  The jump scares come early and often.  You know they are going to be part of a movie like this going into it.  They get them out of the way for the most part, then you are free to laugh hysterically at the rest of the movie, which I did. 

The first thing I have to address is the face,  You know what face I'm talking about if you have seen any trailers for this movie.  I don't know who thought that was going to be scary but they missed on that one.  I would call the curse in this film the Joker curse because it makes the characters make that Joker face.  All through the movie I anticipated the next person to get hit by the Joker curse because IT WAS SO FUNNY.  The curse never let me down.  It seemed to get funnier and more bizarre as the movie went on. 

One thing that was annoying (but also funny) in this film was the way the rules of the curse kept changing.  It was honestly like the writers realized what they were doing wasn't going to work for some reason or another so they just decided to abruptly change it.  It was very unapologetic too, like the characters would actually just come out and say something like, "Oh yeah, the rules are such-and-such now.  It was absurd. 

One thing I hate about these type of movies, and this one was probably the worst I have seen, is the very lazy way they have of using Google to get all the exposition across to the audience.  I can't think of a more boring way to divulge important plot elements than to watch it come up on somebody's computer screen.  Also, they always come across the exact right thing so easy.  The characters will just type in two or three words and the very first story will be the one that pertains to their situation.  Google has never been that easy for me. 

None of this movie made a lot of sense, but the ending was on another level.  It was such a convoluted mess that I had no idea what was going on and I don't think the filmmakers or actors did either.  Then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, they straight up ripped off the ending of The Ring. 

Truth or Dare is the perfect example of what I mean when I say that just because a movie is entertaining doesn't necessarily mean it was good.  I had a lot of fun watching this and I half way would recommend it, but none of that is for any of the reasons the filmmakers intended.   Truth or Dare is a bad movie.  It's a fun bad movie, but a bad movie all the same.  THE MOVIE MAN GIVES IT 1.5 OUT OF 5 STARS.