Diksha Sundriyal
In ‘Truth or Dare,’ a group of friends gets caught up in a game that turns out to be much more high-stakes than imagined. The film begins with a girl named Olivia accompanying her friends on a trip to Mexico over spring break. There, she meets a man named Carter, who offers to be her group’s guide to an abandoned church at the outskirts of the town. Initially, it feels like an adventure, but when the man gets them to play a very dangerous version of “truth or dare,” they realize their lives are in danger. As the events unfold, the church becomes an important piece of the puzzle in figuring out how to get out of this predicament alive. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Rosarito Church in Truth or Dare is a Fictional Location
As things start to get dire, Olivia and her friends look into the abandoned church where the whole game started. Called the Rosarito Mission, the abandoned place of worship turns out to have been the site of a massacre that resulted in the gruesome deaths of a priest and several nuns. Thus, the church is established as a key location in figuring out the origins of the cursed game and, most importantly, how to stop it. Since it is such an important location in the film, with several key scenes, including the final one, taking place there, the film’s crew turned towards a custom-built set to shoot them.
Since the opening parts of the movie feature the group’s trip to Mexico, the film’s stars did cross the border for a couple of days. Certain establishing scenes were filmed in Tijuana and Rosarito, Mexico. In fact, to help the actors bond, they were sent on a day trip, during which they filmed each other in character. These short clips were used in a montage at the beginning of the movie to showcase the group’s bond. Still, the scenes featuring the church required more preparation and greater control of the elements.
In the movie, the Rosarito mission is revealed to be at the top of a hill and in a very dilapidated state. A soundstage, rather than a real location, was found to be better suited to filming those dangerous scenes. Due to the entirely fictional nature of the storyline, the film’s crew had complete creative control over how to present the church. Instead of using a real church as a reference, the production focused on the plot’s requirements and the scenes to create a general sense of the structure. Since we never see the church in its original form, the film’s crew could use the same set of the broken-down building to film all the important scenes.
Read More: Truth or Dare (2018) Ending Explained: Do Olivia and Markie Survive?
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