I Will Not Dare You to Watch TRUTH OR DARE (2017)

A harmless game of Truth or Dare takes a dangerous turn when a supernatural presence instructs a group of friends to take deadly dares. No, we’re not talking about Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare that came out earlier this year, we’re talking about the 2017 SYFY TV movie. The premise is strangely similar, and I’ll bet some of the dares are even the same, however this version is a laughable mess.

Halloween is fast approaching and a group of friends plan to spend a night at a rundown house. The house is supposedly haunted after several people died there in the 1980s after playing a deadly game of Truth or Dare. Carter (Luke Baines) convinces his friends to play the same game, hoping to channel the spirits and catch one on his phone.

It doesn’t take long for their innocent game to take a strange twist, when truths and dares begin popping up that no one claims to have written. They will get more violent and more intense as time passes, but the game is simple — do the dare, or die.

When this film showed up on my Netflix queue, I confused it for the more recent, feature film released earlier in 2018. This film is actually a made-for-tv movie that premiered on the SYFY channel last October. And while this film has the quality to compete with something in theaters, the acting and script is its complete downfall.

The truths and dares the group must face are all fairly shocking and inventive. They will have you shouting what you’d do in that situation, which makes for some fun moments as a viewer. However, the film is insufferable at times with mediocre acting and dialogue that just repeats itself. It would be a worthy drinking game to take a shot every time a character says “I can’t do this” or “I’m done playing this game” — or some variation of the two.

It’s so repetitive that it begins to get irritating. I mean, they were smart and established they needed to play the game almost immediately, but they then spend the rest of film whining about being done with it, as if they can. The movie also fails to keep track of the rules it implies, framing the house as something they cannot leave, but then deciding midway through that they can.

While I haven’t seen the 2018 Truth or Dare, I can only assume it’s vastly better than this one. So I’d recommend that incarnation be your first experience with the deadly version of the innocent slumber party game.

Update: I have now watched the other film, and it’s not great either. Review here.