Truth Or Dare (dir. Jeff Wadlow)

Jeff Wadlow’s "Truth Or Dare" comes under the tutelage of Jason Blum’s Blumhouse staple, and will hope to achieve the similar success achieved by fellow outings Happy Death Day, Get Out, The Gift orSinister. Yet the fourth film released within the last 5 years to use the tile “Truth or Dare” is a disappointing mishmash of clichéd horror tropes and unremarkable writing - and perhaps the worst film of recent memory to be released from the horror conglomerates staple.

Coming only one week after John Krasinki's terrific and wholly original horror outing “A Quiet Place”, which is scaring-out audiences on a daily basis’ ,this dopey supernatural thriller is far from the engaging character piece it wants to be and shamefully bereft of anything constituting a horror scare to placate it's misgivings.

The rules are simple; tell the truth or you die, or do the dare or you die. It’s an interesting premise, yet one that only serves to confuse the narrative of Jeff Wadlow’s horror film and actually conjure up some unwarranted attention to it’s xenophobic undercurrent.

Our central contingent are spearheaded by best friends Olivia (Lucy Hale) and Mark (Violet Beane) - who hope to venture off on one last trip together to Mexico during spring break before they go their separate ways. Along for the ride are Markie’s boyfriend Lucas (Tyler Posey) and some other closer pals. During a night of debauchery and unresposibnle drinking, Olivia meets charming loner Carter at a bar and is invited to a mysterious and abandoned church to play a game of truth or dare. Suffice to say, before some embarrassing home truths are revealed, our lethario fesses up that the game is real - and they’re part of a trap and when they return to America, they must tell the truth or risk meeting their maker.

All of this would be much more interesting if the jump-scare motif which Wadlow adopts actually ever came to fruition. Add to that the usual teen-angst which becomes the basis of the plot, the main narrative of the drama sees our student co-horts attempt to outwit the curse. In sub-Final Destination type fair, as members of the frat are picked off by the demonic forces- either by not following through with their dare or not telling the truth - there’s some fun to be had in the psychological terror of teenagers revealing secrets to their closest allies or in the sheer misanthropy of their gruesome deaths - it’s all been seen and executed much better before.

Lucy Hale, who will no doubt be recognizable to “Pretty Little Liars” fans gives it some welly, and as the plot starts to unravel and secrets are revealed, she is inherently watchable and tries her very best to inject some plausibility to proceedings. But it’s all to ripe in the end, and the greatest failure of the Kick-Ass 2’s director’s film is it’s not even remotely scary or watchable. And it's use of clichéd narrative tropes and some poor scriptwriting, “Truth Or Dare” is staggeringly dull - closer to becoming a snore-inducingly sluggish spin-off from the Final Destination films. We deserve much better than this, and we know the Blumhouse staple can achieve this - why can't they stick with their winning formula? Someone please remind them that originality is key, as is keeping their audience awake.

Rating 1/5.