Watch If You Dare To — Watch If You Dare To(DVD)

Watch If You Dare To is a 2024 straight-to-video horror anthology film featuring seven new tales of terror. This is a follow-up to the earlier Watch If You Dare released in 2018. 

There’s not much to know about the film, its crew, or cast, so let’s just jump straight in with the first segment. It’s a fairly interesting premise, the story focuses on a group of friends who have broken into an abandoned hospital, and whilst we have a regular audio track, the characters on screen are all mannequins. Later, we cut to a girl out in the woods taking photographs of the abandoned mannequins lying in the undergrowth. The mannequins speak, and next thing you know, she’s joined them.

The second segment features a character who looks like a cross between Voldemort and Mortiis planning a military takeover of Europe. This segment is designed to look like it was a silent film from the 1920s, only it’s shot in colour.

The third segment features a weird killer demon guy in a Mexican wrestling mask and a bad ass heroine with a spiked baseball bat. Segment four sees the same two girls drawn into a weird demonic demonic-looking box after opening it, with splashy gory consequences.  This one features a weird, out-of-place dance number. The fifth segment is set at Halloween, where a group of friends gather for a party. After one of the guys, Parker scratches his finger on the Halloween tree (a small tree that has been placed on the table) he ends up dead in the bathroom. Soon, all but one of the friends end up mutilated by the plants. Segment six features two friends who are experiencing a power cut. One of the girls goes for a shower, and all hell breaks loose. The seventh features a girl (who later discovers is called Jennifer) in a mask being led down a corridor, when she eventually takes the mask off, she is confronted with a man tied to a chair. The pair seem to be locked in some sort of basement. The man, Arnie, says he has been here for days and needs water. A note appears, which the girl reads, explaining something to her about Arnie. This is followed by the sudden appearance of three swords, and a man emerges from the darkness behind Arnie. He tries to encourage Jennifer to kill Arnie. What path will she choose?

Watch If You Dare To is a pretty mixed affair, the first segment with the mannequins was interesting but fairly short. The second featuring the weird monster in military dress didn’t really work for me, whilst the next two featuring the two girls fighting various demonic characters were cheap fun. The fifth segment with the Halloween Tree was an interesting premise, but ultimately too short. The final two segments were probably the most effective here, the two girls in the apartment during a power cut was simple and straightforward, but seemed a little higher quality than what had gone before it, whilst the final story set in the basement followed suit with some good use of light and dark.

Overall, the film wasn’t awful, but it certainly wasn’t a classic. Mostly, it looks cheaply made and some of the acting was pretty wooden.  The final two stories upped the ante slightly, but I doubt that it’s something I will return to again. Not the worst way to spend an hour of your time, but I can’t see anyone returning to it time and time again.