The tween mistakes of Rampage and Truth or Dare

Rampage is a movie for 12-year-old boys seemingly made by 12-year-old boys. Truth or Dare is a movie for 12-year-old girls seemingly also made by 12-year-old boys.

Scenes from Rampage and Truth or Dare.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, Peter Iovino)

Basing a movie on a game makes a certain amount of sense. Be it board, video, or party, and old game doesn't involve a beloved story to be painstakingly adapted; in some cases, a game provides little more than a premise. Really, they're marketing hooks sharpened by a vaguely comforting sense of nostalgia, which is all that some studios want out of "intellectual property" anyway.

This weekend brings a pair of additions to Game Cinema: Rampage, adapted from the old arcade game about monsters busting up buildings; and Truth or Dare, conceptually riffing off of the non-trademarked party game. Both very much belong to time-honored genres: Rampage is a monster movie as well as a disaster movie; Truth or Dare is a horror movie where a supernatural force stalks a group of young people. But they're similarly interesting in terms of how the games at their center shape and sometimes gender the material.

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Jesse Hassenger

Jesse Hassenger's film and culture criticism has appeared in The Onion's A.V. Club, Brooklyn Magazine, and Men's Journal online, among others. He lives in Brooklyn, where he also writes fiction, edits textbooks, and helps run SportsAlcohol.com, a pop culture blog and podcast.