There can only be one winner.
For those who don’t know, two horror films titled Truth or Dare were released back-to-back in 2017/2018.
Syfy distributed the 2017 film, directed by Nick Simon, and starred Cassandra Scerbo, Brytni Sarpy, and Mason Dye.
(Some Stranger Things fans will recognize Mason Dye immediately as he played Jason in ST4.)
Whereas Blumhouse produced the 2018 release, which Jeff Wadlow directed, and starred Lucy Hale, Tyler Posey, and Violett Beane.
(Lucy Hale would later go on to star in another Blumhouse film, Fantasy Island, in 2020.)
At their heart, both Truth or Dare films have the same premise: college kids being subjected to a deadly game of truth or dare with a demon. But which film did it better?
To declare a winner, we will examine seven relevant components of the films and award a point to whichever movie excelled in each category. The movie with the most points becomes the ToD champion.
1. The Rules of Truth or Dare
Who followed the rules?
The film distributed by Syfy saw the classic party game being played in written form, as players draw cards that say truth or dare objectives. Additionally, dares are allowed to be “shared” amongst the participants.
Meanwhile, the Blumhouse film played “two truths and a dare” which dictates “dare” be automatically chosen if preceded by two truths in a row.
While both films took certain liberties to make the classic party game fit their cinematic needs, Blumhouse gets the point as truth or dare rarely appears in written form and typically tasks one specific player with answering the question or doing the dare.
Point: Blumhouse
2. Chill Factor
Who made the scariest movie?
The 2017 film directed by Nick Simon saw doors opening mysteriously on their own, nooses materializing from the ceiling, and in one particularly spooky scene, the ghost corpse of a player who lost, delivering the terms of the next dare. The ghost scene worked well and would have been welcome to make more of an appearance in the movie.
Meanwhile, Blumhouse’s horror game involves a demon that smiles a little too wide when it possesses people and a handful of dead bodies. It’s fun to watch, but the 2017 film has more elements of horror.
Point: Syfy
3. Message Delivery
Which demon had a better presentation?
One thing is for certain. The demon of 2017’s Truth or Dare worked tirelessly to present the dares to people. While in the Blumhouse film, messages from the demon can appear in various ways, such as handwritten on a flyer, in the form of street art, or carved into a player’s arm, all these messages are hallucinated by the player. The demon did not scrape “truth or dare” into the side of a car.
Meanwhile, the demon in 2017 pulled out all the stops. Sometimes it would talk through the TV or telephone, The Ring/Samara style. Then at other times, the messages would appear more elaborately, such as: scratched into a record, a hundred note cards falling from the ceiling, and swirled in a bedsheet. One moment saw a collection of sheet music that the demon must’ve painstakingly glued together to write its truth or dare message in blood across the pages.
Despite Syfy’s Truth or Dare demon’s best efforts, hallucinating the messages was a better form of delivery as only the player involved could hear them. Bonus points for the fact that the distorted faces of friends convey the messages.
Point: Blumhouse.
4. The Intensity of the Dares
Which film had more horrific commands?
The demon in Blumhouse’s film has a flair for drama. Most of the truths/dares in the 2018 movie involved divulging secrets between friends and causing rifts in their relationships.
Two of the dares that one of the main characters is subjected to as the film approaches its climax are “Get it on with the guy you have a crush on” and “Tell your best friend a secret” (paraphrasing). Meanwhile, in Syfy’s film, someone is dared to “remove seven living body parts” (not paraphrasing).
It seems like one of these demons is operating from Hell, and the other is operating from high school.
Point: Syfy
5. Playing Smart
Which film saw characters make more informed, intelligent choices?
When it comes to wise decisions, 2017’s Truth or Dare takes the cake. From the opening scene, viewers see that players will utilize a multitude of methods to make the dares survivable. One victim covers herself in baking soda paste after being dared to dump acid on her head, hoping that the baking soda would help neutralize the effects of the acid. Furthermore, both movies have a med student on their team, but only Nick Simon’s film utilizes his medical knowledge.
Meanwhile, in 2018’s film, not only did they get into this mess in the first place by drunkenly following a stranger to an abandoned monastery in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, Mexico, but the execution of the dares was also disappointing.
For example, in one scene, a girl is dared to walk the perimeter of a roof until she has drunk an entire bottle of alcohol. Rather than drinking the bottle all at once to minimize her time on the rooftop, she drinks slowly, giving the alcohol ample time to be absorbed by her system, thus making her drunker and keeping her walking longer.
Lucy Hale’s character starts playing smart right at the end, and Syfy’s characters have moments where they could’ve made better decisions, but all in all, the Syfy players tried to play a more clever game.
Point: Syfy
6. Evil’s Origin
Why did the characters end up in this predicament?
At first glance, 2017’s Truth or Dare appeared to operate under the same pretexts as 1408. “It’s just an evil…” game. But the film takes a turn when the victims meet up with the sole survivor of a game that was played thirty years before. The survivor, played by Heather Langenkamp, explains the origin of truth or dare.
Despite the sheer horror star power provided by the appearance of Langenkamp, the explanation as to how this game of truth or dare happened fell flat. While receiving a Langenkamp cameo is always welcome, the film would’ve been better off by remaining ambiguous about the origin.
Blumhouse’s ToD origin story was more thought out, with the evil having been summoned by a young girl who was bent on using it for defense, but then lost control and had to make a sacrifice to put the evil back in its bottle. When the bottle was destroyed, the evil was unleashed once more.
Point: Blumhouse.
7. How Truth or Dare Ends
Who created a more memorable and shocking ending?
A movie can be either saved or eviscerated in the way it wraps everything up. While the final scenes of the Syfy film are decent, Blumhouse stuck the landing perfectly.
At first, it seemed like this film would follow the route of so many before it, where evil gets put back in the bottle, but at the last minute, it didn’t.
We are treated to the scariest presentation of the demon yet, as the creepy smile on Violett Beane’s face feels eerily reminiscent of Jennifer Carpenter’s face when possessed in The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
Moreover, Lucy Hale’s character made two wise decisions back to back. First by tricking the demon, and second by… well… if you haven’t seen it, I shouldn’t ruin it for you.
It was a brilliant, albeit horribly selfish, move on her part. Well done, Blumhouse.
Point: Blumhouse
The Winner Is…
The points are tallied, and we have our winner. By the narrowest of margins, Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare (2018) wins.
While Syfy’s film was scarier, had smarter characters, and more intense dares, Blumhouse’s movie had a better ending, more iconic delivery, a better origin story, and stayed true to typical Truth or Dare gameplay.
Special recognition for Nick Simon’s film is in order as it is a low-budget TV movie, and it still managed to score close to the film produced by a titan in the horror industry.