Tarot (2024)

Score: 1.5 / 5

A group of seven friends rent a mansion in the Catskills to celebrate a birthday and, while there, they discover a box of unique Tarot cards in the basement. Naturally, they use them to read their astrological horoscopes and soon after their readings start to come true in the worst ways possible. As their friends die in violent ways, the survivors race against time to learn the mystery of the deck and stop its curse from continuing.

There is nothing -- nothing -- original about this story, the latest example of the same plot used in horror films for well over fifty years now. Naughty, pretentious, vaguely self-aware teens (who inexplicably can afford a mansion as their weekend getaway) read the proverbial Latin and summon an evil force that preys on them one by one. That's what the film is and is meant to be, so perhaps a rote screenplay and familiar ground isn't the point? Sure, let's follow that line of thinking.

What, then, could Tarot offer a discerning audience? A masterful plot twist, or unexpectedly timely character arc? Sadly, no such luck. I hoped that perhaps the reader of the cards might have an ulterior motive, revealed in climactic fashion, or that the cards themselves might be sentient. Again we are disappointed. SPOILER ALERT: the cards formerly belonged to an 18th century astrologer whose daughter was unjustly murdered by a grieving baron, so she cursed the cards to kill anyone who used them in the future. Yet it's also very much the same astrologer who appears to possess the cards, manifesting as the various figures as she haunts and hunts her victims. So the internal logic of the central horror conceit doesn't quite line up.

Frustrating as that may be -- and indeed it is -- it is not the film's only nor greatest sin. First-time feature directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg have no clear sense of what exactly they are filming. Helped by an unfocused and droll screenplay, they are unable to determine which (if any) characters are worth investing in, leaving us adrift in an ensemble of actors who look and perform like they'd rather be doing anything else. The only interesting thing for us is to see when and how they will inevitably face their fates. Well, if it is fate; the "main" character, who recently went through a breakup, spends lots of time talking about fate but conveniently forgets her own words repeatedly. Worse still, the directors never engage with any tone for the proceedings, allowing one particularly annoying character (Jacob Batalon) to crank out obnoxious attempts at comedy and others to be simpering, shaken, or silly in their turn.

The kills are the only memorable parts of this film for me, and even most of them are lackluster in terms of editing technique, recalling as they do scary flicks from the early 2000s. The designs of the manifested cards -- mostly practical -- are pretty great, which is a boon. But they are featured so briefly, in such woefully dim lighting, and with such choppy cuts that they're hardly introduced before disappearing again. If this was meant to be a creature feature, why don't we see more of the goods? If it's meant to be a possession shockfest, where's the ingenuity and creativity with these nominally diverse bodies? If it's meant to be a warning against occultism (or, better yet, a satire on teens and New Age spirituality, which is absolutely the direction I'd have taken), where is its earnestness or conviction?

The irritatingly vaguely titled Tarot is apparently based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope, and while I'm curious about that material and hope it's more inventive than this dismal adaptation, I'm more curious why that fabulous title wasn't carried over. Perhaps the writers (also the directors, mind) took to heart the idea of being read to and so decided to read to us, over-explaining every single step of the plot in exposition that had me audibly groaning in the theater. Wasting its potential for novelty, the film relies on the worst kind of jump scares in the most predictable places, insulting the monster designer by poorly lighting and frantically jerking us away from the film's most interesting assets. It also insults its own production designer by starting us in a suitably creepy mansion (please ignore the unlikelihood of that, as a rule) and then tossing us into a shitty college campus for most of the movie. A movie that insults its own creative minds -- and the only ones with clear artistic effort here -- doesn't deserve to have a life of its own.