I would bet my sexy ass that you've already heard this plot before (especially if you've browse through a movie archives of the '80's). Nerd gets bullied, bullies get killed in return. Truth Or Dare (aka Truth Or Die), conclusively, is as cliched as its narrative. When a nerd goes suicidal a year after a shameful end-of-the-year party, his older brother vows revenge. Big brother rounds up five of the bullies that might have triggered his baby bro's suicide and tortures them one by one, squeezing the truths out of them. When things turn to a plot like this, the execution has to be at least good (like in Cabin in the Woods), but how the film is fleshed out isn't special either.
To exacerbate this, the characters that director Robert Heath (Sus) develops are all exasperating and loathing you want to advance their demise. Big brother Justin (David Oakes) sets up a Hostel-like game of truth or dare, pick the latter and you'll get to choose a friend's fate, a tube in his/her mouth, the tube jointly connected to two jars, one tap water, the other battery acid. This kill starts to grow tired fast and you wish the characters would come back to life and just get a better, gruesome and thrilling kill. After the first half and the game is interrupted, kills start to get better, adding a little spice to the gore and an okay-some bit in the flow where the story is moving. But it's just there, sitting dumbly, just there. No hopeful effect that somehow it would manage to save the whole movie.
This is because of the sad fact that there is not a lot of good things you can tell about Truth Or Dare. Because it doesn't have a lot of good things in it, really.
The acting, while not entirely terrible, is not so good except Oakes's and Jennie Jacques who obviously had the most experience among the cast. Oakes is a TV actor for the series The Borgias and Jacques is a babe always present to slasher films (Demons Never Die, Cherry Tree Lane). Thinking of it, you'll deduce that it's not entirely the actor's fault, but its scribe Matthew McGuchan who draws his character so badly that it pulls down its jaded premise even harder.
The reason I'm writing you this is because Truth Or Dare is in Bloody Disgusting's Selects and there must have been kind of some error in putting this one up. BD's selection has always been satisfactory and I find it surprising that they end with this one.
Truth Or Dare is only enjoyable if you by any chance is one desperate horror fan. Fortunately, I'm far from that desperation. C+
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