A Game of Dares, a Dare of Endurance
If you ever wondered what would happen if a group of college students tried to summon evil using the combined power of bad decisions and worse acting—well, congratulations, you’ve already seen Truth or Dare (2017). Directed by Nick Simon and unleashed upon the unsuspecting public via Syfy (because of course it was), this supernatural “horror” film manages to turn one of the simplest childhood games into 90 minutes of cinematic self-harm.
It’s a movie that dares you to stay awake and tells you the truth about low-budget television horror: some things are better left in the idea stage.
The Setup: Ghosts Hate Game Night
Eight friends—each more disposable than the next—decide to spend Halloween in a “haunted house” where teens died decades ago after playing Truth or Dare. Naturally, they decide to play the same game, because college apparently erases the survival instinct. It’s not long before a vengeful ghost shows up to turn their night of fun into a séance of stupidity.
The rules? Tell the truth or do the dare. If you don’t, “the dare does you.” Which sounds spooky until you realize that means the ghost basically has to do your homework for you.
The problem is, Truth or Dare doesn’t understand that premise works best when it’s fast, fun, and filled with escalating insanity. Instead, it’s paced like a group project meeting where no one read the assignment.
Meet the Victims (Sorry, Characters)
The cast of victims includes all the usual horror archetypes:
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The Responsible One (Cassie Scerbo as Alex), who yells a lot and survives slightly longer than everyone else.
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The Troubled Best Friend (Brytni Sarpy as Maddie), who alternates between crying and losing body parts.
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The Jock, The Nice Guy, The Goth Vegan, The Comic Relief, and of course The Dumb Boyfriend Who Definitely Deserves to Die First.
They’re less characters and more walking to-do lists for the grim reaper. None of them have enough personality to make you care, though to be fair, the ghost seems equally uninterested.
At one point, a character is dared to eat burned human skin, and honestly, that’s one of the more tasteful moments of the film.
The Kills: When CGI Is the Real Horror
The deaths in Truth or Dare are supposed to be the big selling point, but they land with all the impact of a wet tortilla. There’s an electrocution scene that looks like a YouTube tutorial on “how not to use Photoshop,” a ghost hanging that defies physics, and a poisoning sequence so dull you start rooting for the toxins.
Every kill feels like it was designed by someone who once read about violence in a book but didn’t have the budget to show it. When one character gets impaled on a pipe, it looks like the pipe was made of foam and regret.
The ghost, meanwhile, isn’t exactly terrifying. Instead of looming shadows or creepy whispers, it prefers sending text messages. You know you’re in trouble when the supernatural entity haunting you has better data coverage than you do.
The Ghost That Really Needed a Hobby
The big bad spirit behind the cursed game is supposed to be mysterious and vengeful. Instead, it comes across like a bored teenager with Wi-Fi access and no supervision. It kills people for lying or stalling but somehow finds time to set up elaborate death traps, livestream suicides, and hack group chats.
At one point, it literally weaponizes cockroaches, which makes it less like a demonic presence and more like a pest control issue.
You can almost picture the ghost’s afterlife résumé:
Name: Donna Boone’s Dead Friend
Experience: Making furniture move, sending spooky text messages, part-time dare enforcer
Objective: Seek vengeance, maybe start a TikTok
A Plot So Thin It Could Be a Dare Itself
The story’s logic collapses faster than a Jenga tower during an earthquake. The cursed house is haunted because some teens died there in 1983, and the survivor—Donna Boone (played by Nightmare on Elm Street legend Heather Langenkamp, who honestly deserves better)—is now a disheveled Cassandra warning the new batch of idiots that they have to “finish the game.”
Apparently, the only way to survive is to go back into the house and keep playing, which sounds like the horror equivalent of “touch the stove again, maybe it won’t burn this time.”
By Round Three, the film has devolved into pure chaos: poison drinking contests, tooth extraction parties, impromptu amputations, and a finale that involves a car crash and possibly no survivors. It’s meant to be tragic, but it’s so absurd that you half expect the ghost to pop up and say, “Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the bad ending.”
The Acting: Dare Accepted (Truth: Regretted)
Let’s be kind: everyone in Truth or Dare looks like they’re trying. The problem is, they’re trying to act inside a script that reads like a rejected Goosebumps episode. Cassie Scerbo commits to her role with admirable intensity, delivering lines like “We have to finish the game!” as if she’s trying to win an Oscar on Syfy.
Brytni Sarpy gives Maddie a glimmer of humanity—right up until she’s forced to pull out her teeth for dramatic tension. The rest of the cast range from “reasonably terrified” to “reading cue cards off-camera.”
And then there’s Heather Langenkamp, horror royalty, relegated to explaining ghost mechanics through expository monologues. She could’ve been the bridge to greatness, but the film uses her like a Wikipedia footnote.
Production Values: Halloween on a Student Budget
Everything about Truth or Dare screams “filmed in one weekend.” The haunted house looks like a slightly messy Airbnb, the lighting alternates between “too dark to see” and “too bright to care,” and the soundtrack sounds like someone dropped a Casio keyboard into a blender.
Even the camerawork feels haunted — constantly jittery, occasionally out of focus, and allergic to framing more than two characters at once. You almost expect the cinematographer to be another victim of the curse.
And let’s not forget the editing. The film cuts between scenes so abruptly it’s like the movie itself is trying to skip to the good parts — only to realize there aren’t any.
The Real Curse: Mediocrity
The concept of a haunted game of Truth or Dare should be a blast — it’s horror’s answer to Final Destination meets Jumanji. But this version strips away all the fun and leaves us with what feels like a cautionary tale against group activities.
There’s no tension, no wit, and no real sense of danger. The dares are random, the truths are bland, and the pacing is slower than a ghost with dial-up. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, and it’s definitely not daring.
By the end, when our heroine is maimed and everyone else is dead, the only truth worth noting is that you’ll never get those 90 minutes back.
Final Verdict: A Game You’ll Regret Playing
Truth or Dare isn’t the worst horror movie ever made — but it’s close enough to smell the cheap latex. It’s a film so aggressively average that even its ghost seems bored halfway through.
If you’re looking for scares, you’ll find clichés. If you’re looking for gore, you’ll find bad CGI. And if you’re looking for truth? The truth is, Syfy made this movie because someone, somewhere, dared them to.
Rating: 3 out of 10 haunted smartphones.
Because sometimes, the scariest part of a horror movie is realizing it’s only halfway done.
