I had moderately high hopes for this movie but I found it mostly dull and tedious. It is about a group of high school students in drama class, but with much more drama outside school hours.I was anxious to see Emmy Rossum who was so appropriate as Christine in "Phantom of the Opera". Here she is Alexa Walker, serious about her acting aspirations but doesn't much positive feedback.One of her friends is a guy, Ashley Springer as Ben Berger. Ben is a social outcast and is really confused. In one conversation he admits he is about to finish high school and has never kissed anyone. But that conversation was in the swimming pool with another guy, and they fill that void in Ben's life.That guy is Zach Gilford as loner Johnny Drake, who also becomes attracted to Alexa. He declares "I am not gay" but near the end he, Alexa, and Ben get passionate as a threesome. Everyone becomes confused by that situation. About the best I can say about this movie is that it is 'interesting' but I could not recommend it.

I wouldn't call this a typical teen angst movie. It has some interesting twists and a surprising bit of innocence that you wouldn't guess from the trailers and descriptions.Zach Gilford, Ashley Springer and Ana Gasteyer were the highlights of the film for me. (I'm not normally a fan of Ana's work, but I liked her in this.)Warning, the rest is a potential Spoiler... Alan Cumming's role is quite short, but his his character's words perhaps explain more about the actual story than anyone else's. If you watch the movie and find yourself scratching your head when the end credits roll, go back and watch his scenes. How is a great actor created? Do life lessons that just happen to you naturally because of who you are have a bigger impact on your life than ones you unnaturally try to force to occur? I think those questions play a big part in how the characters end up. Overall I think it's a good movie, a bit more complicated than some, no easy answers or simple conclusion. If you're the kind of person who tries hard to present yourself as something that you're not, you may appreciate this movie more than others.

An almost insurmountable problem for me while viewing 'Dare' was, yet again, a filmmaker (and an Indie one to boot.) who cast actors too old to play high school teens. One would have gathered from the main and featured characters that they were in a movie about some college campus with a heavy population of post-graduate students. Hollywood has done this kind of casting since time immemorial. Don't the producers/directors realize that they're using a visual medium to tell the story? Not a radio show, not a play in a large theater but a movie, using close ups as well as medium and long shots. For a couple of the actors another dead give away is when they opened their mouths to speak. They sound like young adults, not 17 or 18 year old's. The movie, though revisiting an already well chewed story, is competently done, the performances are well directed and acted and director Adam Salky has done very well in this his first feature film. P.S.: I thought the major trauma that occurred to John near the end of his section could have been made clearer. Afterwards, I was never completely certain of what had happened to him prior to his deciding to become a serious student of acting at the very end of the movie.

The movie is split into four acts. The first three tell the story from the perspective of each of the three main characters, respectively, and the last act is a kind of epilogue. The film is still linear though, meaning that while the second act shows a different perspective than the first, it's still a continuation of the story, rather than a restart from the beginning. The rest of the acts continue that way.The first act had me wondering why I was putting myself through what seemed to be your run-of-the-mill teen drama that might as well have been an episode of The O.C. rather than a feature film. A typical high school "good girl" who always played it safe and never got into trouble starts questioning her value system. She wonders if being "bad" would benefit her, namely, to give her the life experience she needs in order to realize her dreams of becoming an actress. Her lifelong platonic male best friend is worried about her newfound rebelliousness, and he even feels betrayed by it.Sometime during the second act is when this film started to deviate from anything I had expected. When the third act came, the story had gotten so messed up that I felt ashamed of my initial assumptions. I'm not even going to hint at what happens, because it might soften the impact of seeing it unfold on the screen. All I'll say is that it deals with questioning the seeming obviousness of people's sexuality and popularity. This turned out to be something of an artsy picture that didn't focus on typical Hollywood entertainment values. It's "smart", in that it's not always obvious what exactly is going on, and there's no voice-over to tell you what the characters are feeling. It's an original story that makes you think.Was this movie good? Tough call. The acting is excellent and the production quality high. Some people might be bored or just confused by this, due to the strangeness and ambiguity. If you like a deviation now and then from the norm, you might appreciate it, and if you're into independent film, definitely give this a shot.