Truth or Dare: Curse and Ending Explained

For Truth or Dare, we explore the origin of the cursed game, how the players attempt to break the curse, and what the ending means for a potential sequel. Blumhouse has found a great deal of success in recent years with different takes on the horror genre. In 2017, M. Night Shyamalan returned with Split, Jordan Peele released the now-Academy Award-winning Get Out, and Happy Death Day put a deadly spin on the Groundhog Day concept - just to name a few of Blumhouse's releases.Now, Blumhouse again turns to a classic game for new horrific inspiration with Jeff Wadlow's Truth or Dare. The film follows a group of college students on spring break who get roped into a dangerous game of Truth or Dare by a stranger they barely know. It's only when they return home that they realize the game won't let them stop playing - and if they don't play, they die. Olivia (Lucy Hale) and her friends must figure out a way to break the curse, all while continuing to play the game.

Over the course of Truth or Dare, the mystery of the cursed game Olivia and her friends are forced to play is revealed. Not only are the basic - but deadly - rules of the game explained, but Olivia discovers the source of the curse and how it can be broken. However, the ending of Truth or Dare goes in a somewhat unexpected direction. So, we break down the curse, unravel what the ending means, and discuss how Truth or Dare could continue in a potential sequel.

This Page: The Curse Explained

The Curse Explained

The initial rules of the game are established early on in the movie, with Carter (Landon Liboiron) explaining them to Olivia: You tell the truth or you die, you do the dare or you die, refuse to play and you die. However, one other rule is revealed partway through the movie - if two people in a row choose truth, the next person is required to choose dare. This rule comes from the group that originally started playing the game. It's later revealed that Carter's real name is Sam and he and his friends were the group that started playing the game after stumbling upon the Rosarito Mission Church in Mexico.

As established in the film, this group's Truth or Dare game is cursed after Sam trashes the church and breaks a pot that had been containing a trickster demon named Calax. In the mythology of the movie, demons can possess people, places, objects or ideas; in this case, Calax possesses the game. However, when Sam's group of friends is whittled down to just him and a girl named Giselle (Aurora Perrineau), he's dared to bring new people into the game - enter Olivia and her friends. Sam, using the fake name of Carter, brings Olivia and her friends to the church and inducts them all into the game. Once they each take a turn, they're in. Even after they leave the church, the game follows them, forcing them to continue to play in the same order as in the church. Old players stay in the game, although it's unclear in the movie if Sam is taking his turn or not.

Because the game is possessed by a demonic entity - especially one described as a trickster - it's smart and Olivia quickly realizes there's no way to outsmart Calax. Plus, the game forces each of its players to take their turn using torturous visions. This starts off mild, with Olivia seeing "Truth or Dare?" written in various places, but escalates to Lucas (Tyler Posey) seeing the question burned into his arm. In addition to these visions, Calax can send messages through electronic devices. We see Giselle receive a dare in the opening sequence of the film when the cashier at a rest stop answers the phone; later, Markie (Violett Beane) receives her dare via text message. The fact that the game can pass through electronics is key to understanding the ending, but first, we also must also understand the origins of Calax.

The Origin of Calax Explained

In her search to find a way to break the curse on the Truth or Dare game, Olivia tracks Calax back to a massacre at the Rosarito Mission Church two generations ago. Olivia and Lucas track down Inez Reyes, a grandmother who was a survivor of the massacre. Inez reveals to Olivia and Lucas that the church was a convent where she and other girls lived. They liked to play games such as Hide and Seek, but the priest at the church played, too, and the girl he found was subjected to his own game (it's heavily implied the priest sadistically raped the girls he found).

So, one girl used a spell to summon a demon, who turned out to be Calax. Calax possessed the girl and played his own game, cutting the priest up into pieces that he hid around the church in a twisted spin on Hide and Seek. However, after the priest's death, Calax didn't want to stop playing. He forced the girls to continue playing a dangerous game where most ended up dead. The girl who summoned Calax was able to trap him by repeating a spell seven times and sealing a sacrifice into a pot with wax. Inez reveals she was the girl who summoned and trapped Calax, and to complete the binding spell, she had to cut out her tongue as a sacrifice.

As Inez tells Olivia, only the one who broke the pot that set Calax free can trap him again. Since Sam was the person who broke the pot when he trashed the church before he and his friends played their game of Truth or Dare, he's the only one capable of ending the game. However, Olivia's plan to get Sam to break the curse doesn't go as planned.

Truth or Dare's Ending Explained

Olivia, Lucas and Markie bring Sam back to the Rosarito Mission Church to end the game by trapping Calax. However, Lucas is forced to take his turn while Sam is reciting the spell and he's dared to choose which of Olivia and Markie to kill. When he refuses to complete the dare, Calax possesses him and kills Sam before he can complete the ritual, then Calax forces Lucas to kill himself. This sequence is a little unclear, because Sam had begun to cut out his tongue as the sacrifice, but he's presumably interrupted before he can finish. And since Sam must be the one to trap Calax, no one else can complete the ritual.

Since Sam is dead and unable to trap Calax, Olivia tries to trick Calax into revealing how to end the game, but it doesn't work. Olivia realizes that the only way for the game to end is for Olivia and Markie to die without bringing anyone new into it. Instead of the two girls killing themselves or waiting for the game to kill them, Olivia uploads a video online explaining what happened to her and her friends and the curse of the Truth or Dare game. She ends the video by asking, "Truth or Dare?" Because we know the game can be passed through electronic devices, and that once you're asked into the game you're part of it, anyone who watches the video through to the end has joined the cursed game. Essentially, Olivia sacrifices thousands, potentially millions, of people to save her best friend.

This also works as a thematic conclusion to Truth or Dare since the conflict between Olivia's moral compass and her loyalty to Markie is a recurring aspect of the movie. Early on, it's established that Olivia and Markie have a saying between them, that they'd choose each other over the rest of the world. This pact, of sorts, is tested in the initial Truth or Dare game when Olivia is asked whether, in the hypothetical situation of an alien invasion, she'd sacrifice her friends to save the world, or save her friends but doom the entirety of Mexico. Olivia chooses to sacrifice the few to save the many - a classic moral dilemma - and says it's the only right choice.

However, Olivia's choice at the end of the movie indicates she was lying. When confronted with an actual moral dilemma, she sacrificed the many to save herself and her best friend. By her own definition, she made the wrong choice. But she also upheld the pact of loyalty she had with Markie, to choose each other over the rest of the world, adhering to her own personal moral code. So is what Olivia did wrong? Would someone else have made a different decision? Truth or Dare's ending poses those questions to the audience, offering up its own moral dilemma for viewers to discuss and think on what choice they themselves would make in Olivia's situation.

Lucy Hale walks forward with a group behind her in Truth or Dare

How Truth or Dare Sets Up A Sequel

What's particularly curious about Truth or Dare is that it seems to leave little room for a sequel, which is a rarity in modern Hollywood, especially with horror movies. Considering the massive success of certain horror franchises - Halloween, Saw, Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring, just to name a few - it seems unlikely any modern horror movie wouldn't allow for sequel potential. Certainly, Truth or Dare is open-ended insofar as Calax wasn't defeated and the game didn't end, but the mythology as established in the movie leaves little room for further conflict/resolution.

With the cursed Truth or Dare game spread all around the world thanks to Olivia's video, there's undoubtedly plenty of potential for a sequel to explore other players who have been roped into the curse. It's a similar premise to The Ring, wherein a cursed videotape is passed around and dooms those who watch it. If Truth or Dare were to be granted a sequel, it seems likely the followup would follow new characters who had watched Olivia's video and unwittingly joined the game. But, considering what we know of the mythology from Truth or Dare, it's unclear what kind of resolution a sequel could have since, as far as we know, the game can never end.

Based on what we know, with Sam dead, there's no way to trap Calax and end the game. If there's no way to end the game, there's no real conflict for a sequel. It would just be an endless sequence of seeing how players try not to die. Truth or Dare establishes that Olivia is unable to outsmart Calax and trick the demon into ending the game. And with Olivia's video spread throughout the internet, there's no way for the game to end by way of everyone involved dying. Once something is on the internet, it essentially can't be deleted. If there's no way for the game to end, and no way for players to escape if they can't defeat Calax, what would a Truth or Dare sequel even be about?

One way to make a sequel about players trapped in the game and wanting to end the curse is to expand the mythology of Calax. Sam was the only one able to trap Calax in the same way that Inez did, but a sequel could see players figuring out how to banish the demon for good. Calax isn't based on any specific mythological creature. All we know about him is that he's a trickster demon. But while there are trickster gods in various cultures, Calax doesn't seem to be based on any one folktale or mythological figure. So, a Truth or Dare sequel has room to expand the entity in any way they see fit. And, if players in the game were to learn more about the demon himself, perhaps they could discover a way to kill or banish the demon.

Or, a Truth or Dare sequel could go back in time instead of forward. As with fellow Blumhouse productions Ouija and its sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, a Truth or Dare followup could explore Calax being summoned by Inez Reyes. Or even another instance of Calax wreaking deadly havoc on humans. So, in actuality, there is more than one way for the world of Truth or Dare to be further explored in a sequel.

Of course, whether Truth or Dare is granted a sequel depends on how successful the film turns out to be. While Blumhouse has found great success with some of its recent releases, it remains to be seen if Truth or Dare will be another hit.