Tags:
Film: Tarot
Year: 2024
Directors: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg
Writers: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg
Starring: Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley and Jacob Batalon
Review:
This was a movie that I heard was coming out. It didn’t come to the Gateway Film Center, so I didn’t even realize that it was out until friends of mine were seeing it. I saw that I could catch it at the AMC by me and checked it out on the Sunday of opening weekend. The ratings and thoughts were in the middle to not very good. I was still curious, especially after learning it is from a pulp novel from the 1990s.
Synopsis: when a group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of Tarot readings, they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death.
The group from the synopsis are college age and staying at a house they rented for the weekend in the Catskills mountains. This takes place in the New England area and it sets this up by everyone drinking Sam Adams beer. Our lead is Haley (Harriet Slater). She was seeing Grant (Adain Bradley), but they recently broke up. None of this friend group even knew. Both are here, which makes it awkward when this gets revealed. Also, there is Madeline (Humberly González) who has a crush on Lucas (Wolfgang Novogratz). Another couple here is Paige (Avantika) and Elise (Larsen Thompson). It is the latter’s birthday as well. Then our last friend is the comedian of the group, Paxton (Jacob Batalon).
They end up running out of beer. Paxton is convinced there must be a secret stash. This leads them to a room that is locked. Lucas breaks the lock and it goes to the basement. Inside is astrology items. They also find a box with runes carved into it. They find a creepy set of tarot cards within. Haley got into card readings to tell horoscopes and her friends want her to do one for them. She declines, saying that it is bad luck to use someone else’s deck. They convince her though.
This is their entertainment for the night. Haley takes what she is doing seriously. The readings she does seem to have ominous omens, especially since they end with cards like the hermit, the magician, the countess, the devil and death. These cards don’t necessarily have the same direct meanings. Everyone goes back to their normal lives, but something seems to follow them back. Something supernatural seems to be after them, even though it can been seen as unfortunate accidents. They need to figure out the history behind this deck before it is too late.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I’ll start is that this has good aspects here. I like the idea of doing tarot card readings to tell horoscopes and then something bad happen to these people. There is a nitpick that I have and I’ll get into that shortly. I can also explain it away easily enough. This deck being as creepy as it was great. Having now seen this, I can see the gripes that others have and they’re like mine.
Now that we have that out of the way, let me delve deeper. I’ll go in order. I’ve already said that I like the premises. Finding this old tarot deck and telling ‘futures’ from it works. It does feel like subbing out a Ouija board for the cards and then something supernatural coming after our characters. I’ll give credit here still. My nitpick is that Haley says about how you’re not supposed to use someone’s else’s deck to tell readings. Then she just goes ahead and uses them anyway. She seems to believe in what she’s doing and takes the outcomes of the readings seriously. I don’t buy that she would do it then. This is a nitpick and peer pressure is something that I could see changing her mind so I’ll digress. I don’t believe in astrology or that cards like this tell the future, but I know people do so I’m not going to rain on their parade. I do like this entity of the Astrologer (Suncica Milanovic) and how she factors in as well.
Next, I think I’ll take this to filmmaking. I’ll say here again, I love the card design for this tarot deck. I’ve seen cool ones in the past and have seen classic designs. Having them being as horrific as they was great. That adds to the atmosphere. Then bringing these entities to life was something else that as great. My guess is that they went CGI. I still thought they looked creepy so I’ll credit there. My bigger issue is that instead of working more on the atmosphere, they chose to go more for jump-scares. It also feels like it is borrowing from Final Destination with how hauntings play out. This is designed more for mainstream audiences and it doesn’t work as well for me. The sound design fits in there. This isn’t poorly made. I thought that the cinematography and framing do good things. It gets creepy at times. They just don’t build on that as well as they could.
I’ll go over the acting then. No one is bad here, let me say that. I just got annoyed with how the characters were written. For me, I think part of that is these are college age people now. If I was still that age, I think I could connect better. I thought that Slater was fine as our lead. Bradley works as her ex, but we know there is still feelings there. Their breakup is fresh so that contributes. They both are attractive so that helps. Batalon adds humor which was good. Avantika, González, Novogratz and Thompson round out this group. They don’t do well in fleshing them out either to help me care when things happen to them. Their horoscope seems to be the extent of what we know about them. That is creative way to introduce them, I’ll say that. Olwen Fouéré works as this expert they seek out to learn more. I liked seeing that James Swanton was here to take on a couple of the entities. I’ll also credit Nikolic, Milanovic and Carter there as well.
There isn’t much more to say here. In conclusion, this is fine. I’m not the target audience as this is designed more for mainstream fans who are in that PG-13 range. We get jump-scares instead of atmosphere. That’s not to say this is all bad. I thought the look of the tarot cards were great. The concept that by doing readings with the deck, it has cursed this group of friends. The acting was fine. Our characters just lack depth in my opinion, outside of what we learn from the readings. The framing and cinematography were fine. Even though they went CGI mostly for the entities, they still looked creepy. This just doesn’t do enough to set itself apart and I think this will be forgotten unfortunately. I’d recommend this to fans of more of the more conventional horror films.
My Rating: 5.5 out of 10