I Dare You To Stay Awake During This Film

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The 'truth' option of the game 'Truth or Dare' is only ever to find out something rude about a person or to discover what they really think about you. In which case I'll save you some time by admitting that I definitely did do that thing and no I can't fucking stand you. Obviously I'm not going to pick 'dare' because I really don't want to know which of my friends is going to use the game as an excuse to have me show them my cock. Last time I was forced to play, a friend of mine was dared to give me a back massage which seemed a bit unfair. It wasn't me being dared to do anything so why do I have to be a part of this? On the flip side I was quite in need of a massage so I figured I'd protest enough to show I wasn't up for it but not so much that it didn't actually not happen. No harm in a free massage after all is there? Well, I didn't think so either, until my friend accidentally got an erection whilst doing it. I mean.. what the fuck. Even at one of those dodgy massage places it's meant to be the client that ends up getting off and not the prick that works there. Anyway the long and short of it is that I do hate the game but at the very least I suppose it's not quite as fucking boring as the film Truth Or Dare.

The film begins with a group of young students deciding to go on an end-of-year holiday with each other. I can't remember if it was specifically spring break that they were going on because nobody screamed it and then flashed their tits, although I suppose it could have been. Either way they end up in Mexico because this film involves a curse and since most of the Native Americans have been murdered I suppose that's the nearest place with a tradition involving spirits and ghosts and shit. There they meet a lone chap at a bar who invites them to take a trip to a creepy church in the middle of the night were he asks them for a game of 'Truth Or Dare'. Rather than smashing his head in with a rock and then fleeing for their lives however, the gang decide to sit down and play with the creepy fucker. In which case I have pretty much no fucking sympathy for them at all and actually kind of hoped that they'd all wake up without their kidneys because at least a sick person might have benefited from a spot of organ trafficking. Sadly for them it was the obvious trap that it seemed it'd be and they all find themselves stuck in a 'Truth or Dare' curse. Each of them will be asked a 'truth or dare' question by somebody possessed with a malevolent grin and if they fail to play along then they'll be forced to kill themselves. To be honest I really wasn't stressing about which options the characters opted for.

Anyway, my first criticism of this film is that considering the characters are all meant to be about nineteen years old, it seems a strange decision to then cast actors that are clearly in their fucking thirties. I checked and the lead actress was born in 1989 which is one year after I was and trust me when I say that nobody is buying me as a teenager. A bouncer was legally obliged to check my I.d. the other week and he actually laughed when he saw what year I was born in. That bell-end would literally be better than the casting directors this movie had and all he does for a living is stand by a door whilst looking like a chunky fucking potato. I'm not being funny but things start to go wrong for the group and as one 'teenaged' character starts to freak out and smash things up, I wasn't sure if it was because of the curse or if the menopause had just kicked in. Of course the occasionally weird face that's telling them to do things is probably a clue that something supernatural is happening, however, my Nan forgot to take her pills once and she genuinely started seeing flying lizards above her head. Also the weird faces in this movie are so over-used that what little impact they may have initially had is completely diminished by the mid-point. One character describes them as being like a shit snapchat filter which is actually the line I'd have used to slag it off with too.

My second main criticism would be that somewhere buried below all of the shit and incompetence of the movie is a semi-interesting idea. At the start of the film, there are several threads that are set up in terms of character backstory that are then used to cause the friends to all turn on each other as the game begins. I guess I quite like the idea of exploring how much we all really like each other and how much we manage our own truths to maintain our relationships at the expense of revealing our real self. However beyond the fact that the film squanders this idea with its own convoluted crap it would require one simple thing... you'd have to believe that these friends had literally any interest in actually being friends. The two main characters claim to be the bestest of chums before spending the entire movie expressing what seems like absolute contempt for each other. I know strange things are happening in this movie but they don't even want to hear each others reasoning when either acts out of character. If my friends do weird things then I'm more than happy to give them the benefit of the doubt and ask, “Why the fuck did you get an erection whilst massaging me?” However here one character is forced to ram a pen into his own eye before head butting it deeper into his own brain and once dead he's never spoken of again. By writing about another character that gets shot later on I'm now discussing her more than her friends were as she lay dead in their fucking arms.

Finally I think the main problem is that the film has literally no faith in its own concept. I mean it's pretty fucking simple.. play 'Truth Or Dare' until the friends either turn on each other or die and you've got a nice little character piece. Set that fucker in real time and have the balls to only be about seventy-five minutes in length and this stupid idea might even work. However as soon as the movie realises that there are plenty of loop holes to survive, it begins to change the rules to the point that a more accurate title than Truth Or Dare might have been Generic Curse Movie. The film cuts before any gore is actually shown and the horror moments are so signposted that the characters may as well shout, “Quick lets run over there to that jump scare”. Happy Death Day was a similarly high-concept horror from the same studio that came out around the same time and at least that had the good sense to be quite fun. This is also the same studio by the way that released the brilliant Get Out which must just be pretty embarrassing for the makers of this film. If Get Out is the A-grade student getting awards for writing then Truth Or Dare is the thick kid at the back who doesn't realise that sticking a cocktail stick into a dog turd won't count as a science project. At one point a character in this film puts a gun to their head and pulls the trigger, which is fine. I just think that if you're making a horror movie then you don't want the only evidence that somebodies brain was involved to be when you see it smeared all over a fucking wall. Thanks for reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.