Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 6, 2018

Jokes galore swirl through the head when considering how to review Truth or Dare, but better to spare the nonsense and noise and just come out with one simple truth: this is a bad movie, not "bad" as in cheaply put together but "bad" as in "inconsequential" and "unoriginal." There are a few decent chills and a handful of passable character moments as the game's players are forced into impossible situations that rise above the surrounding empty cues and cheesy scenarios, but such are not enough to save the film from severe genre mediocrity, at best, and downright absurd, contrived, and predicable nonsense at worst.

Olivia (Lucy Hale) is a straight-laced college student who would rather spend her spring break doing good samaritan work for Habitat for Humanity than blow it on a trip to Mexico with her friends. But her friends, including bestie Markie (Violett Beane), all but drag her on the trip, anyway, promising to help her do her good work over the summer at twice the required hours. The vacay is going well enough, but when Olivia meets Carter (Landon Liboiron), she and her friends are talked into heading to an abandoned mission for a game of truth or dare. It begins innocently enough until Carter reveals his "truth:" he tricked the friends to coming in order to get them to play the devilish game, a game with very real life-or-death consequences. They brush off Carter's warnings, but when it does indeed appear that the game has followed them back to school and as the body count mounts, the survivors find themselves forced to play and discover a way to stay alive and maybe cheat the system if they are ever to break free from the demonic loop that intends to see them all killed, one way or another.

This is the embodiment of inconsequential genre moviemaking. It’s a film that plays to type with no concern for creativity or audience engagement. It does build up some backstories for its characters to make the games of truth or dare feel more important, exploring the inner psyches of the closeted homosexual teen, the grieving girl who recently lost her father to suicide, the best friend living with suppressed secrets and guilt, but none of the material elevates beyond largely uncreative frameworks. The film plays through genre tropes as the friends begin to die one-by-one and the survivors slowly piece together what’s happening as the body count mounts and the sadistic demon that is facilitating the game makes the players either reveal various, and often very difficult and personal, truths or perform increasingly deadly dares, which range from revealing private parts to a crowded barroom to shooting one another. It’s very Final Destination-esque in structure and its differentiating factor comes in how the character "complexities" influence and advance the game, but for the most part various death scenes come across as one-offs and excuses to kill the characters in some form or fashion, and usually not all that memorably, either (hitting heads and breaking necks, gunshot wounds, etc).

Perhaps worst of all are the "demon faces" which appear in moments when characters become temporarily possessed to challenge a player to truth or dare. Eyes turn red and faces become canvases for warped, big-dumb smiles. Whatever momentum the movie builds in between it kills each time a character appears with what might be called in the real world a "$#!*-eating grin" on their faces. Over-exaggeration is not this movie's friend, and something a little more purely sinister and less humorously-bent haunted house-ish might have worked a bit more in the movie's tonal favor. But then again Truth or Dare never elevates beyond play-it-safe fodder, anyway. It's a movie made to capitalize on cheap thrills and draw an audience that demands little in return for its money or time. And the movie works well enough for completely empty entertainment value, something a Horror hound can stare at for 100 minutes and leave the theater no better or no worse for the experience. So long as one doesn't expect to be mentally or emotionally challenged by the film, it might just work well enough as a brainless time killer.

Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Truth or Dare's digitally sourced image offers a quality, if not fairly basic-for-2018, Blu-ray image. Everything is in good working order. Details deliver good, essential complexity, revealing various skin imperfections and characteristics with agreeable depth and complexity in close- and even medium-distance shots. Environments, whether well-lit school grounds or the dark and dank mission interior where the film (earnestly) begins and eventually ends finds good textural definition and clarity to various elements, though black levels in such scenes are a little flat and elevated. Colors are pleasantly neutral, finding a basic sense of saturation and depth throughout, ranging from blood to clothes and never wanting for significantly more intensity. Skin tones appear accurate. Noise is a mild interfering quality at times but other source and encode issues are largely absent.

Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Truth or Dare features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track is energetic. Dance music explodes from the speakers at a party early in the film, and even as it gives way for dialogue, the intensity and clarity and full stage saturation remain. Score is wide and deep with strong instrumental fidelity and push through the stage. Dialogue reverb in the old, abandoned mission where the gaggle plays truth or dare offers impressive width and openness, and the track regularly expands through the sides and rears as chants of "truth or dare" power through with scratchy width and depth. A return to a key location later in the film is met with significant outbursts of bass, and most of the death and action scenes play with some sort of sonically intensive, stage-penetrating goodness that carries the scenes where the drama fails to do so. Dialogue presents with natural clarity and positioning for the duration.

Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Truth or Dare contains two featurettes and a commentary. Additionally, this disc houses two cuts of the movie: Unrated Director's Cut (1:40:32) and Theatrical Version (1:40:01). Finally, a DVD copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase.

• Game On: The Making of Truth or Dare (1080p, 6:49): A quick run-through of the plot, crafting the script based solely off a title, character details, cast bonding, and whether the cast would choose truth or dare in a real-life game.
• Directing the Deaths (1080p, 4:15): A short exploration of how the film's death scenes compliment the characters' inner demons.
• Audio Commentary: Co-Writer/Director Jeff Wadlow and Actress Lucy Hale (Olivia) deliver a fairly balanced and insightful track that covers film structure, tone and themes, characters and performances, death scenes, and more.

Truth or Dare Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Truth or Dare is certainly not the worst movie in the world, but then again it's not exactly brimming with reasons to watch it, either. At its best, this one offers passable, albeit very crude, baseline genre entertainment. It delivers silly chills, uncreative deaths, and transparent twists, but at the same time it's modestly enjoyable in a completely empty way. The verdict? Watch-and-forget. Universal's Blu-ray does offer good video and engaging audio. A few supplements are tossed in for good measure. Genre fans should check it out but probably only as a rental.