I Dared You! Truth or Dare 5 (2017)

I DARE YOU! TRUTH OR DARE 5

WRITER: Tim Ritter

DIRECTORS: Tim Ritter and Scott Tepperman

STARRING: Scott Tepperman as Chainsaw Dax

Jim O'Rear as Dr. Desmond Hall

Trish Erickson-Martin as Stillborn Sara

Joel D. Wynkoop as Dan Hess

QUICK CUT: A man tries to help out his wife by running errands around town.

THE MORGUE

Dan Hess - The man who let Mike Strauber escape, now a private investigator. He’s still haunted by his choice, and will do whatever he can to limit the ripple effect of damage it has caused.

Chainsaw Dax - A man who had a past encounter with Mike Strauber, and came out the worst for it. He has become a bit unhinged since then, and spent a lot of time in mental institutions. He wants revenge on Mike and Dan Hess for what he sees as their responsibility for his lot in life.

Dr. Hall - The doctor who is seeing Dax and helping him out, and setting him on his path.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! And so we come to the final Truth or Dare movie by Tim Ritter. It has been a wild, sleazy ride, and I've loved most of it. So let's see how this journey ends.

The movie opens up on a young Dax in a video store, coming across the VHS tape for the original Truth or Dare? A Critical Madness. His mom chases him away, so he goes and reads girlie mags in the woods.

During the credits, we get a highlight reel of the first film, leading up to the kid who got chainsawed in the face. Later in the movie, it reveals that boy was Dax, and this event scarred him, both physically and mentally.

Oh this raises questions I don’t think we can get into.

We jump to the present-ish day where Dax is being released from a shockingly run down mental institution. His doctor talks about government cut backs, but even that doesn't explain this place's level of disrepair.

BUT whatever, they had access to an abandoned building to film in and ran with it. I can respect that.

Dax is also wearing a copper mask of his own making that covers up only half his face. This is to hide his chainsaw scars, and as an homage to Mike Strauber. Weird flex, but okay.

The guy was in the institution, because thanks to the attacks and his own issues, Dax grew up to be the serial killer "Chainsaw Dax", and was put away due to mental illness.

He finds a room to rent, and the landlady? Hotel owner? Asks him about the mask, naturally. He makes up an excuse that it was Mardi Gras, and he thought it was cool. I'd normally skip this sort of detail, but since Mardi Gras was just a week ago, it was a nice bit of timing.

She then asks if he would like to play truth or dare and...he instantly starts choking her, while he either flashes back to playing as a kid, or imagines this as a kid's game as part of his psychopathy. It's not 100% clear.

Anyways, that's our first kill of the movie, and Dax sees on the card his doctor gave him, the address for Mikey's Truth or Dare website, which is at least a nice bit of continuity.

Speaking of the last movie, we get a bit of some of the dare footage montage from that, as a man talks about how thanks to the site, his daughter was murdered. He hands an unseen figure a briefcase of money, and when he closes it, we see it's Dan Hess, the man who let Mike Strauber escape all those years ago, and frequent character appearing in this series.

Dan has been hired to...wait. Okay, I've watched this scene several times, and they never say WHAT he's supposed to be doing. Just that "it has to stop" and "He's in", whatever it is. It’s made clear MUCH later in the movie that he’s hunting down the people posting dares on the site so authorities can deal with them.

Meanwhile, Dax is breaking into someone's house to spy on them having sex, as part of one of his dares for the site.

He's engaging with a woman named Sarah via the site, and she tells Dax about her shitheel of a boyfriend, how he was abusive, took pictures, drew all over her with marker and...

...Y'know, I don't want to make too much light of this, but if you make a big deal about 'he drew on me with marker' and then cut to you in a TSHIRT covered in marker, yeah, no, it rather undercuts your point. Fortunately, Josh is enough of an ass beyond that.

So, naturally, Dax dares her to go break into his house, and beat him up with a baseball bat. I see nothing wrong here.

Meanwhile, Dan Hess is finding a Truth or Darer shocking people, and takes him in to have a chat with the cops.

And to kill some time, Dax goes to pay his ex girlfriend a visit, hoping to patch things up. Which might be difficult when he meets her new boyfriend.

We pad out the movie with a news report about the website, that clarifies Hess was hired to investigate the website, and that makes no sense, but fine.

When you can’t afford actual Eric Roberts and have to order him off Wish dot com.

Also, I laugh at the news report saying most of the videos are fake or "Tim Ritter fan films". Nice.

Once things calm down a bit, Dax returns to his ex's house and slays the both of them, then returns home to fill Sarah in.

Things didn't go as well for her with her boyfriend, who woke up while she was lurking over him with a baseball bat. He saw her there, and enacted his revenge.

Dax dares Sarah to let him help her with taking care of Josh, and she accepts. So they lure the bastard out to a remote location, so Dax can strangle him with some Christmas lights. He then lets Sarah have her wish of baseball batting him.

This is officially a Christmas movie now.

While Dax is using Sarah's phone to record the murder, he discovers that she is also a patient of Doctor Hall's, and this whole relationship was a setup, thinking they could be good for each other.

Dax sets up a meeting with his doctor so they can have it out, and Doctor Infodump explains how this is all a major revenge plot against Dan Hess, who took Hall's girlfriend. Seriously, if this was all about obliterating Hess, whom everyone hates, all he had to do was ask!

Meanwhile, Dan and his wife start having a lengthy sex scene, which Dax shows up to and videotapes to post online and discredit him.

And wow, they are shockingly oblivious to a big dude in a copper mask standing next to them while they have sex.

This movie is going about things half-masked.

Hess' wife gets in trouble at work because of the video, which is how they find out about it. Then, Dan gets a call from Dax saying they've kidnapped Linda, and they're going to play a game called "I Dare You."

Dax will give Hess a series of dares, and for each one he doesn't complete, he'll harm Hess' wife. If he manages to get through them all, who knows? Someone might get out of this alive.

This is A LOOOT of work from a jilted lover to get revenge.

Dan gets his first dare, shoot up some heroin, and as an incentive, Dax sends a video of him pouring gasoline over his wife. SIGH if you are threatening someone as leverage, you do not START with gasoline. You gotta start small, so you have some place to go. If you torch her first go, there's your leverage, up in, ahem, smoke.

Anyways, Dan gets the heroin, shoots up, and makes his way to the next assignment.

Here’s a story about a little guy that lives in a blue world

Following a whole bunch more dares that send Dan all around the town, setting things on fire, robbing banks, cutting off his pinkie, and all manner of mischief, he finally arrives at the abandoned sanitarium where his tormentors are waiting with his wife.

Dan arrives, wanders around for a bit, and then runs into Dr. Hall who...

Oh for squawks sake.

Yeah, Dr. Hall is suddenly trans, with no hints, no reasons, just to add one more layer to the top of this. It's...tasteless and sophomoric.

The two rivals for Linda's heart fight it out for a bit, with Dan trying to be clever with one liners, and eventually burying an axe in Hall's gut.

So now it's Dax's turn, and he leads Dan on a merry chase around the abandoned building, with Hess getting sweatier and redder as the whole thing goes on.

Is the plan to just run around and lead him on until Dan has a heart attack?

They even do the classic bit of running through doors as we look down the hallway. How do you do this bit and NOT get Yakety Sax??

Eventually the two of them actually stop running and have an actual fight, which ends with Dan jabbing the needle he got from his drug trip, and jabbing it into Dax's eye.

Anyways, Dan finds his wife and frees her so they can ride off into the sunset. And of course they do the usual "Bad guy opens his eye when you think he's dead!" gag before cutting to credits.

HEY DAN WANNA CHECK OUT MY NEW CHAINSAW AND MIKE STRAUBER MASK??

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: There are moments where I think it’s not great, but then suddenly OH right, this was made in 2017, and it looks pretty sharp and good! The scenes that are a bit worse for wear I think are the darker shots, so they get a bit more crushed in low light, and that’s fine.

Audio: It sounds solid.

Sound Bite: “That's fucked up...scientifically speaking!"

Body Count: A respectable, if small, amount.

1 - Six minutes in and Dax's friend dies when he strangles her in flashback.

2 - And shortly thereafter, he kills his new landlady.

3 - Dax slices his ex's new boyfriend with a cd.

4 - Then he chokes out the ex in the tub.

5 - Dax strangles Josh with Christmas lights and then Sarah beats him to death.

6 - Dan axes Doctor Hall

7 - Dax gets a needle filled with drugs stabbed into his eye.

Best Corpse: The landlady in the tub is a nice bit of bloody gruesomeness.

Blood Type - C+: Pretty basic effects, but nicely done, and splashed all over bathroom walls.

Sex Appeal: A few sex scenes here and there.

Drink Up!: every time someone wants Dan Hess to get gonorrhea.

Movie Review: At this point, you know what you’re getting with a Tim Ritter/Truth or Dare film. A bit sleazy, some social commentary, but fairly well made on a budget. They know their limits and don’t try to overreach their grasp, and know the audience. And this works. Tim’s always been a solid filmmaker, who works well within his means, and I Dared You is no different. It’s fun, it fits well into the world of Mike Strauber, and has a few decent kills. Three out of five sets of Christmas lights.

Entertainment Value: It’s undeniable that Joel Wynkoop is the star of this movie. He’s been friends with Ritter forever, been in most, if not all, the Truth or Dare movies, and making him the star makes sense, essentially with his connection to the first film. He’s very fun to watch, and is a decent actor in his own right. And he absolutely sells the signiature line of “All right I will!!” late in the movie. Dax is an interesting character, and he’s having some fun gnawing on scenery. Four out of five deadly cds.