Director: Jeff Wadlow
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Heading to Mexico for spring break, a group of friends are coerced into playing a demented game of truth-or-dare from a local guide who tells them they must now partake in the game or die like his friends did, causing them to try to understanding the rules of the game before it kills them one-by-one.
Review:
This one was an incredibly bland and dull genre effort. Among the biggest issues is a general and gross misunderstanding of how the game is played, where the invocation to invite the evil force into their lives is completely missing. The general assumption of inviting evil into your lives is never brought up, instead given a rather banal and underwhelming exercise that amounts to being inside the church-grounds as a means of initiating the next phase of the game. This all comes off without any context or reasoning, as if this one was sold mainly on the idea of a game being passed around without much thought since the overwhelming feeling here is one of a complete misunderstanding of how the game goes about.
On top of that misguided behavior, the film’s idea of playing the game results in nothing more than typical teen melodrama and unappealing secrets. It’s not really a shock that this one devolves into affairs, clandestine hook-ups and long-held secrets and crushes that are usually featured in such efforts, as that tends to be the main focus of what the game is seeking to exploit. None of these features are interesting or enjoyable when it’s the same old formula recycled again and again in these situations, and it’s all the same nonsensical melodrama that erupts from these challenges that don’t even make the group that appealing anyway, resulting in a wholly unengaging and troublesome effort.
Finally, the film is entirely unscary when it focuses on the exploits of the demon going through the cast. The idea of signalling the possession as exactly what’s described in the film as a lame filter found on a social media video completely reduces the fear of the demon who’s chasing after them when what’s supposed to signal his taking over random strangers to denote the next stage of their game. There’s no suspense at all from the random appearances as the telegraphed camera movements and musical stings carry all the surprise away. The CGI used to change their faces is atrocious and highly suspect, making it look even worse with the underwhelming secrets that favor melodramatic contrivance over scares and completely banal way of playing the game, making for the films’ problematic issues.
There are a few worthwhile aspects to this one which are pretty much the scenes of them going through their paces in the context of the games’ truth or dare segments. With the first few instances of the group succumbing to accidents giving this a solid grounding at first to the power of the game, the later scenes showing them having to harm themselves or go through painful, dangerous stunts in order to stay alive makes for a somewhat enjoyable time here. The best is a genuinely suspenseful sequence where a participant must scale the ledge of a house with precarious items just below providing potentially grisly landing spots and a fine finale that makes for an energetic time here, but that’s really all that really works here with some really misguided approaches.
Overview: */5
Filled with a game that completely misses the mark on what it’s supposed to be about, a lack of scares and a few genuinely interesting elements present, there’s not a whole lot to get out of this one. Really give this a shot if you’re a fan of tween or inoffensive mainstream genre efforts, but hardcore underground genre fans, older genre watchers or those turned off by the flaws should heed caution or even outright avoid.
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