Diksha Sundriyal
Directed by Jeff Wadlow, ‘Truth or Dare’ (2018) follows a group of friends who get entangled in a game that turns out to be much more dangerous than they’d bargained for. The story begins with a simple road trip, during which they are invited by a stranger to play a game of “truth and dare.” However, things take a turn when failure to comply with the game’s demands results in the players’ deaths. It doesn’t take much for the characters to realize they need to keep playing to stay alive. However, they are also compelled to find out how such a dangerous game started and, more importantly, how it will end. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Truth or Dare Plot Synopsis
Olivia is planning to join a philanthropic venture during spring break, but her friends convince her to drop that plan and join them on a trip to Mexico. The group includes her best friend, Markie; Markie’s boyfriend, Lucas; their couple friend, Penelope; Tyson; and Brad. The group has a great time together, and one night, Olivia meets a guy named Carter. He invites the group to join him to an abandoned church, where Olivia notices some weird stuff lying around. Carter proposes a game of truth or dare. It is supposed to be simple fun, but then Tyson pokes Olivia for being in love with her best friend’s boyfriend.
Things get more serious when Carter reveals that they must keep playing the game or they will die. He admits he intentionally brought them to the church, then leaves. The group is confused, but they return home, ready to move on. That is, until the game starts again. Olivia hallucinates people asking her to choose truth or dare. When she chooses truth, they ask her to say something true, and she blurts out the fact that Markie cheats on Lucas. While she is still making sense of what happened, their friend, Ronnie, is also asked to play truth or dare.
He chooses dare, but when he refuses to go through with it, he dies. This confirms for Olivia and her friends that they must keep playing, or they will die. At the same time, they also realize that the game isn’t so simple. It is meant to make things more difficult for them. Whoever is pulling the strings wants them all to die a horrible death. And the only way they can save themselves is if they get to the bottom of the truth about where the game really comes from.
Can the Game be Stopped? Are Carter and Lucas Dead?
The more Olivia and her friends play the game, the more they realize that it is not supposed to end well for any of them. They could continue playing for the rest of their lives, but the game wants things to get chaotic for them. It wants them to fail and die, which is why it becomes important to figure out how to stop it once and for all. So, they looked into the history of the abandoned church where the whole thing had started for them. The only living person from before the church fell into ruin is a former nun called Inez Reyes. Olivia and Lucas visit her and ask her what exactly is going on with the game and how, if at all, they can stop it. Inez reveals that when she was still a nun, she and her fellow sisters were abused by the priest.
To stop him from hurting them, Inez summoned a demon named Calux. At the time, the young sisters used to play all sorts of games, like hide-and-seek and truth or dare. The next time they played it, the demon took over and killed the priest for them. However, it refused to go away and kept playing the game, forcing the deaths of the nuns, much like Olivia and Lucas’ friends were killed. Since it was Inez who had summoned the demon, she was the only one who could trap him. So, she chanted an incantation seven times, cut off her own tongue as a sacrifice, which she put inside a pot that now trapped the demon. That was the only way to get rid of the entity.
Olivia and Lucas realize that Sam, who is revealed to be Carter, must have broken the pot when he trashed the place, thereby releasing the demon. This means Sam/Carter is the only person who can trap the demon again. So, Olivia, Markie, and Lucas find him and take him all the way back to that abandoned church in Mexico. At gunpoint, they force him to chant the incantation seven times, and later, Olivia explains that he must cut off his own tongue if he wants the game to stop and permanently ensure his survival. While he continues the ritual, the game continues. This time, it is Lucas’ turn, so he chooses dare. The demon asks him to kill either Olivia or Markie, but he refuses and waits for the ritual to be complete.
Olivia and Markie try to hold him back while Sam is in the process of cutting off his tongue and finishing the ritual. However, Lucas breaks free and, under the influence of the demon, kills Sam. With Sam dead, the ritual is left half-finished, which means the demon is still around and the game is still in motion. Sam’s death also means that the only person who could have performed the ritual and stopped the demon is now gone. No one else can do that anymore, and hence, Olivia, Markie, and Lucas are yet again trapped in the same cycle of truth and dare. Since Lucas refused to go forth with the dare, the demon kills him as well.
Do Olivia and Markie Survive?
When Sam and Lucas die, Olivia and Markie are the only ones left standing. It is Markie’s turn to play, and Olivia tells her to ask for a dare. Markie is dared to shoot Olivia, and despite not wanting to kill her friend, she does it by accidentally shooting Olivia in her arm. Now the dare is complete, and for a minute Markie is free. The next turn is Olivia’s, but as soon as the demon comes to her in Markie’s form, she asks him, “Truth or dare?” Now, the demon is also included in the game and must play to finish his turn. He goes for “truth,” leading Olivia to ask how to end the game. This is when he confirms that with Sam gone, the game cannot be stopped. He was the one who freed the demon by breaking Inez’s sealed pot, so he was the only one who could do the ritual.
Now, either Olivia and Markie keep playing the game, or they bring in more players to increase the turns between them. The problem is that the only way to include new players is to initiate them at the church. This is why Sam, as Carter, had lured Olivia and her group to the abandoned church in the first place. The girls could do the same, but the demon knows that Olivia is too good a person to put other people’s lives in danger to save her own and Markie’s. However, he underestimates her. While she may have been that person at the beginning of the movie, she is not anymore. She has lost almost all of her friends, and since the cursed game is not going to go away, she will do whatever she can to save herself and Markie.
How do Olivia and Markie Add New Players?
Though it is true she cannot bring new people to the church right at that time, she can still reach out to them. She records a video and shares it on social media. She tells people how she and her friends got stuck in this game, how they all died, and how the game should continue with more people if she and Markie are to survive longer. The video is watched by people all over the world. She knows not everyone will believe her, and even if someone does, they would prefer not to get caught up in a game that risks their lives. And yet, there will be some curious people who might be drawn into the danger. They might want to test Olivia’s claims, or they could simply be drunk and in the mood for fun, accepting to play the game without fully understanding it.
In any case, out of all the people in the world who watch the video, someone will say yes and elongate the chain, putting more distance between Olivia and Markie and their next turn. The more people are added, the more time it will take for their turn to come around. Moreover, some of them might add even more people into the mix, expanding the circle and adding more time to Olivia and Markie’s clocks. The fact that we see the demon next to a girl who watches the video on her computer proves that someone else has already been added to the chain. Now, until every single person who has agreed to play the game finishes their turn, Markie and Olivia are safe. Eventually, their turn will come again, but many people will have died before then.
At the same time, it will give the girls more time to look into the demon they are dealing with and come up with a different way to defeat it once and for all. This shows they haven’t given up yet, but more than that, it showcases how much the girls, especially Olivia, have been transformed by their experience. She has become more invested in self-preservation, and if that means she has to let strangers die to save herself and her friend, she is ready to do it. This is in stark contrast to her character at the beginning of the movie, where she said she’d let her friends die to let a whole country of strangers live. Now, it seems she has learned her lesson the hard way and turned into someone who will do whatever it takes to survive.
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