Movie Review: Truth or Dare (2017)

Synopsis: Eight college friends spend the night in a "haunted rental" infamous for a series of gruesome deaths years earlier. Much like the group that died in the house, the friends begin to play a game of Truth or Dare. It is all in good fun until an evil presence takes over the game and forces them to complete a series of violent tasks in order to save their lives.

Who's in it? The movie stars Cassandra Scerbo, Brytni Sarpi, Mason Dye, Ricardo Hoyos and Alexxis Lemire.


Review: My oldest daughter had an all-day skating competition yesterday and, by the time we were done, we were all pretty exhausted (she skated, but her mother and I had to volunteer and help get her ready for it). So, mostly because we wanted to make sure we could get to bed sooner, we once again decided to save the new episodes of Doctor Who and The Walking Dead for another day and put on this movie instead.

To be honest, based on the description, I had some lowered expectations about this movie (which should not be confused with the 2018 Lucy Hale film by the same name). I figured it would feature a bunch of blood and gore but not much else. As it turns out, it was better than I was expecting it to be.

As I predicted, the movie did have a lot of gore in it. And, if you are squeamish, I would not recommend watching it. After all, my wife and I have both become pretty desensitized when it comes to horror movies and even we were flinching on occasion. But, if you can tolerate that part of the film, it is surprisingly good.

One thing, in particular, I liked about this movie is the way the unseen evil entity had to work to win. My biggest horror movie pet peeve is victims who make the bad guy's work easier by making horrible decisions. That wasn't the case this time around. As the friends learn about mid-way through the film, the game is winnable if they work together and "share" the dares. However, as the game progressed, that became much more impossible to do and, as a result of that, the growing hopelessness as deaths continued to occur made the movie much more intense.

On top of it, they couldn't escape the game simply be escaping the house either. The entity followed them wherever they went. This also added to the movie because they could be challenged to a dare at any given moment.

I think my only real complaint about this movie is there were more dares than truths. There were hints the entity chose the friends because they were each hiding some dark secret. But, we only really learned the truth about a couple of them and it would have been nice to see more of that since, which each truth, it seemed as though the friends were less likely to work together.

Final Opinion: As I said, there is quite a bit of blood and gore in the film so you may want to avoid it if you have a weak stomach. But, if you can tough that part of it out, it is actually a decent enough film to spend your time watching.

My Grade: B

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