“Papa don’t preach I’m in trouble deep”

– Madonna “Papa Don’t Preach”

It’s a tough time for the truth. Of course, there’s stuff like untruthful advertising and “Fake News” circulating seemingly everywhere, but it’s also a tough time for the truth on a personal level as well. Everybody is just lying their asses off right now, and social media has led to a variety of different unseen consequences–one those being the creation of an “online persona”. One of the inherent questions in the creation of that persona is just how truthful it is. Are we the same in our daily lives as we are in the persona we present to the world through things like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Do we consistently display the characteristics “Offline” that we present online? Who are we truly deep down? Breaking down the fronts we present and displaying our true selves to others can be a scary thing, and Blumhouse’s TRUTH OR DARE uses the idea of the terror in telling the truth as a jumping-off point to tell it’s tale. How successful is it in doing that is another matter.

Olivia has her own YouTube channel where she promotes the work she does for charities like Habitat for Humanity. Unbeknownst to Olivia, her best friend Markie has cancelled her upcoming Habitat for Humanity trip so that she can join her and their group of friends for one last Spring Break trip to Mexico. While on vacation in Mexico, Olivia and the group meet a young man named Carter who convinces them to join him for a night of drinking at a run-down mansion nearby. They follow him there– because why not? I mean, have you ever got hammered in a creepy rundown mansion? It’s sweet as hell. Anyway, once they arrive at the mansion, Carter initiates a game of “Truth Or Dare” among the group of friends.

The game starts off harmless enough: Lapdances, kissing, who do you have a crush on? etc., but it takes a turn when Carter explains to the group that they have taken his place in a supernatural game of Truth or Dare, and if they don’t follow the rules they will die. This puts a damper on the party because it’s a real fucking bummer, but also because the rules are not simple. In fact, they are super convoluted and the movie stumbles quite a bit as it tries to explain them. Here’s the simplified version of the game:

A supernatural entity with lame looking joker-face confronts one of the members of the group with a choice: Truth or Dare. This is self-explanatory as either the person must choose to reveal a truth about themselves or complete a dare. If they fail to do either one of these things, they will die. Oh, and one other thing. Since the dare choice is the deadlier of the two choices, the group can’t just keep picking truth repeatedly– so if two people pick truth in a row, the third person must perform the dare. There are probably a bunch of other rules that I am missing, I don’t remember. Half the fun of this silly movie is watching the plot jump through hoops introducing new rules that build off the ones introduced early in the movie. It’s great!

The plot is basically a more complicated version of FINAL DESTINATION– too complicated honestly, but I’m not gonna lie, I had a ton of fun trying to figure out the films goofy mythology. Plus, I like the central conceit that telling a lie can get you killed. There’s an inherent morality to TRUTH OR DARE: If you lie, you die. Even the weird adding-on of rules adheres to that same moral code: If you pick a truth for the second time in a row, you are cursing the next person to perform a dare that will more than likely get them killed.

I also liked that the truths and the dares were character based in this. It wasn’t just those dumb-looking demons showing up and saying, “I dare you to drown yourself”. The truths in TRUTH OR DARE revolve around things like a young gay man coming out to his father, or a privileged male lying to get a job. The plot of TRUTH OR DARE is really shaggy, but the central concept, and the moral dilemmas that come along with it, kept me engaged throughout. This is a movie all about honesty, and more importantly being honest with yourself, and the close friends and family that surround you. Anything less than total honesty is punishable by death. That’s quite a statement to make, especially in today’s post-truth political and social climate.

In the film it’s shown that part of the reason that there has been such a distance between Markie and Olivia in recent years is due to Olivia’s concealing of the truth about her final encounter with Markie’s father before he killed himself. It was during Olivia’s last encounter with Markie’s father where he revealed that he had been laid off, was drunk, and tried to force himself on to Olivia. Much of the two friend’s estrangement revolves around that moment, and much of the third act focuses on the two of them reconciling the past and working toward friendship. A sweet notion for a teen supernatural slasher movie, and one that is undone by a truly insane ending. More on that later.

On the flip side of that coin: You lie. You die. It’s a simple concept. TRUTH OR DARE takes the harsh morality found in many a slasher (Drinking, Drugs, Sex = Death) and applies it to dishonesty. For example; there is a scene about halfway through the movie where Tyson- the hard-partying “bro” Medical School Prospect– attempts to lie his way through his Med School Interview, resulting in the game forcing him to jam his very own “lucky pen” into his eye. The truth in TRUTH OR DARE is also shown as something to be avoided. Even the act of choosing “Dare” is something that is done to avoid telling the truth, as when Olivia chooses Dare to avoid telling Markie about the truth she knows of her father. The “Truth or Dare” conceit is a fun one, and it’s one the movie explores to its fullest extent–and then some– and the game provides a solid way to get the characters to a point where they become complete honest with each other. It’s a nice theme, until that ending.

TRUTH OR DARE leads to the moment where Olivia and Markie find peace with their past, and now that they have failed to stop the game of “Truth or Dare”, find themselves in a place where they know that they must sacrifice themselves for the good of other people. Except they don’t do that. They do the exact opposite. Here’s what they do instead:

Olivia films a YouTube video that explains the rules of the game to the people watching, and then she looks directly into the camera and asks the viewer “Truth or Dare”, dooming anyone who has watched the video. Anybody who has watched her video is now involved in the game, and the more people that watch the video, the further back her next turn gets pushed. So she doesn’t sacrifice herself at all, she just drags more people into the game in the interest of self-preservation.

The ending of TRUTH OR DARE completely invalidates the previous 90 minutes of story that was told leading up to it. It’s nuts! There’s such a disconnect between the story leading to this moment that it makes me think that this is an ending that was studio -mandated, or there was something lost in the translation of the script-to-screen, and at some point, TRUTH OR DARE was a much more cynical film throughout. The ending we get is incredibly pessimistic and seems to be saying that when push comes to shove, deep down we’re all liars out for our own self-interest. I’m still kind of blown away by it, and it makes like the movie more.

TRUTH OR DARE isn’t “good”, but it hit a sweet spot for me. It’s essentially a 90’s teen slasher, with a strict (maybe even stricter) 80’s slasher moral code. That moral code applies to the main character as well. No matter how many YouTube videos you post saying you’re a good person, if you’re not that person deep down inside, you’ll be punished as well. Rules are rules.