Truth or Dare is a horror film from 2013. In short the premise is that of a group of people running a YouTube channel where they create videos with the Truth or Dare theme. Pretty extreme Truth or Dare videos I might add. Although we don’t really get much history of previous videos on the channel we get the idea fairly quick and we really don’t need more than the actual teaser to understand what’s going on. They create extreme content, but immediately after the first shock effect, we get to know that it was actually fake. 

This is nothing negative in their community, people appreciate the shock value and the effort put into the project. They admire the makeup effects and understand they’re not life or death videos even if they seem to be that at first glance. 

There is a lot of humor in the revealing sequence. It’s obvious that they don’t take themselves too seriously. They want to create shocking content and the channel seems to be fairly popular. However… There are individuals that think that they have betrayed their own ideals and that the games must become more realistic. Just after the announcement that their next video will absolutely top the last extreme one we get thrown into the aftermath.

External involvment

Now, an external party gets involved in the creation, and as I said, more realism is needed – and more realism it gets. And that is actually an understatement. From this moment on the gang is in the hands of an imposter calling all the shots. He has his own ideas of what videos “The Truth or Daredevils” should make. I won’t give you any details as this will ruin the watch I think. We need, as an audience, to be kept in the dark of exactly how sinister and sadistic the games become. It’s all about shock values after all. 

If I were to categorize it into subgenres, I think that body horror would be the closest one. Of course, you could also describe it as some sort of torture flick since the perpetrator really seems to enjoy causing harm to the other people. What’s interesting is not the gore or the methods used in the truth or dare games he’s conducting, a game where you absolutely cannot win. The interesting thing is how it escalates during the duration of the film. The violence gets more and more brutal and there doesn’t seem to be any escape.

How far would you go?

But there’s also another aspect, and this might be me over-analyzing the content. But there’s also an actual point being made about what we, as human beings, are willing to do to ensure our survival. We will betray our loved ones and our friends if we think it will save our skin. Some are of course more reluctant than others but some seem very rational and understand that the lesser of two evils is to do harm to others rather than being subjected to it yourself. But things escalate – and escalate – it gets totally out of hand.

At the very beginning I thought that I had this film figured out. I was sure I knew where it was going and I lived in that assumption until the very end. I must say it was relieving to be proven wrong about my initial assumptions. But at the very end it strikes me, was I really wrong? What will happen next?

I think Truth or Dare was a really effective movie and I like the acting quite a bit. There are details here and there which could have been more convincing, but as a whole I think they all did a fine job. The visuals could have been more revolting but I don’t think that everything would have been possible to show on camera. Something I would have wanted to have been shown in all its glory but other things are better left to the imagination. In any case I feel that the realism is good enough to make the whole thing believable.