I try to contemplate another reality, one where I managed somehow to see not a single shot or single frame of the trailer to the new Blumhouse horror product (I barely credit it as an original movie): would I have been just a shred more surprised, a morsel of any sense of "wow, that was a really intense scene." And while the trailer, which in this reality I have seen many times (thansk for replaying it to death movie theaters), does give away... Practically all of the movie, including any of its halfway shocking acts of violence and murder, I don't think going in blind would cover up the simple fact that this is a toothless piece of shit.
We always hear that filmmakers don't set out to make a bad movie. I dont think that was even as ambitious a goal for someone like Jeff Wadlow; he has so little imagination that his most basic competence with a camera set up is irrelevant. He doesn't see the potential in his schlock: this is a weak-tea It Follows, as a bunch of the most telegraphed college-ers (there's even the vulgar nerdy guy, who has the novelty of being a type from the kinds of horror and comedy of the 80s we tend to not put in nostalgia) go to Mexico and meet a Jim Sturges clone who manages to pass on to them his "truth or dare" curse.
Wherever they go, they have to face Joker-ish faces asking them if they will truth or dare. Naturally rules have to change midway due to Wadlow's and company's idiocy with their own halfassed concept: why not just say 'truth' to everything? So after a while, once even the dimmer bulbs in the aufience question that (sure, having the truth bit is embarrassing, but not life-threatening), it becomes a "duck duck goose" deal; you cant keep saying truth so dares have to happen to keep the kills and perils of violence up... And it's somehow here that the real troubles begin.
I don't know if I could exactly overlook the wretched dialog (some of it is so laughable that I feel like any good soul who does a parody of this has an easy street to go), or the performances (like all those equally forgettable and simply lame 80s horror, they all just barely fit the types, although in one or two scenes the two main girls, who are both kind of terrible characters, try to emote up to something acceptable). What sinks this into being total garbage is that it's a PG-13 horror movie in 2018. This shit just doesn't fly to me anymore. If I watch something with such a patently ridiculous premise and then even more stultifyingly dumb backstory that gets dumped in the third act, and yet there's a streak that has potential for Final Destinstion style kills (at one point a girl on a roof having to walk drunk as a dare has such potential), there has to be an embrace of the blood and guts. Just go for it. Youve come this far, so at least be honest. Truth or Dare is kidding itself, and it's so very bad because of th at most of all (god, that ending too!)
I know when I was the age that Jason Blum thinks his movie is ripe for easy Friday the 13th (weekend) bucks, this wouldve been weak too. I wanted the risky and profane and super violent. And if this was horror meant more for younger kids, there's too many elements that arent quite appropriate for them. Perhaps with a good enough rewrite - and being shortened as a half hour Are You Afraid of the Dark episode - it could have not been necessarily good, but tolerable. This is intolerable; it isn't fun, it isn't inventive, it isn't giving us characters who are relatable or charismatic, and it doesn't have the courtesy to try something unique while ripping off other concepts. It's the lowest of the low that Hollywood horror can give us; that Blum decided to put his name on it is like discovering Attack of the Crab Monsters was really titled American International Pictures's Attack of the Crab Monsters. Why?
What a title to start with... One of the worst movies I've seen all year.
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