Truth or Dare, or Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness, is an interesting film and that is putting it lightly. A lot is going on in this movie and there is a lot to unpack, yet the makers of this picture are correct in that it is all about madness.

The story involves a man named Mike Strauber who comes home from work one day to find his wife in bed with another man. It destroys him on a level rarely seen and the audience discovers that he has never had an easy life. He was picked on as a child, he had a nervous breakdown at one point and with this, there is most likely no coming back as his mind shatters. Mike soon begins to have hallucinations, such as picking up a hooker who does not exist and taking her camping. Said imaginary woman plays truth or dare with him which leads to him cutting off his finger, ripping his tongue out and cutting himself. Suffice it to say, this leads to a stay in a sanitorium and from there, things get crazier and even more brutal until the end of the film where he is finally put down for good.

There is a lot of madness in this movie and it is not confined to Mike’s state of mind. It begins there when he starts to hallucinate and self-harm and soon enough, everything goes off the rails on this crazy adventure as Mike is released from the asylum, where he is now looking to kill his ex-wife. Then it is back and forth to the looney bin where after each occurrence, it gets progressively more violent and more shocking and at times, even slightly humorous in a dark and twisted sort of way. There are moments where it all makes a person cringe, like when he kills the baby and its mother or when he takes a chainsaw to a child, those being the worst of the lot, yet there are more to be had and the film pulls no punches. There is no doubt that this is a horror movie and it is horrific more often than not, yet it is utterly captivating to see just where it and Mike go. What will he do next? How can this picture get any crazier than it already is?

Tim Ritter is the man who can be blamed or praised for this film and if his original vision had been made as he had wanted to see it, this affair might have turned out far better than it already was. The movie would have a troubled production with Ritter essentially taking a backseat with another director being brought on board and there would be chunks of his movie that were either not filmed or were cut making this a hard watch despite being a good one. There were a lot of plot holes to be had in this movie and some of them were quite ridiculous, such as Mike’s tongue and finger inexplicably growing back where ten minutes previous they had been removed from his body. The editing could have been a bit stronger, even had it not ironed out the story a bit, it could have at least made it less choppy. That being said, the grainy look definitely added to the horror and the uncomfortable feeling the events taking place gave the audience so where one might see a negative, there was also a positive.

Many might decry Truth or Dare as nothing more than an excuse to gross out the audience with cheap theatrics and bloody visuals. In part, they might be right but there is enough of a story here and it does manage to engage the viewer which is important so it is at least worth a look should one be in the right frame of mind to do so. Even more surprising is that there were four sequels to this film, though just where it could go after this one is mind-boggling.

2 out of 5