Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness

Mike Strauber, a businessman with a history of mental illness, walks in on his wife, Sharon, having sex with Jerry, his best friend. Mike storms off, and wanders aimlessly as he contemplates suicide while flashing back to his time with Sharon, and a childhood incident where he cut himself with a razor while playing truth or dare? Mike picks up a female hitchhiker, and the two go to a campsite, where they play truth or dare? The game turns violent, and ends when a park ranger finds Mike, who had mutilated himself at the behest of the hitchhiker, who was just a hallucination.

Mike is admitted to the Sunnyville Mental Institution, and is released over a year later due to good behavior, overcrowding, and budget cuts. Immediately after being discharged, Mike tracks down and murders Jerry, and is readmitted to Sunnyville after being wounded while trying to kill Sharon. Once back in Sunnyville, Mike hallucinates playing ‘truth or dare?’ with two disfigured patients, and cuts most of his own face off with a knife he had smuggled into the facility. Five months later, Mike, who has taken to wearing a frowning copper mask, goes berserk in his room after an employee taunts him by giving him a picture of Sharon. When an orderly tries to calm him, Mike stabs the man in the eye with a pencil, then escapes the institution, hijacking a car full of weapons on his way out.

Mike goes on a rampage, indiscriminately slaughtering men, women, and children on his way to Sharon's house. Realizing where Mike is going, Detective Rosenberg and Doctor Thorne head there, with Thorne arriving first. Thorne is unable to save Sharon, and is killed in a shootout with Mike. Rosenberg happens upon Mike, bleeding heavily from being shot by Thorne, and manages to talk him down, and disarm him. Mike is taken by paramedics, and placed back in Sunnyville.