Tarot is a horror movie that follows a group of friends who use a cursed deck of tarot cards and become bound to the evil entity that created them. They are all told their fates and must find ways to survive their horoscopes, (horoscopes? More like Horrorscopes)
Tarot falls in a bucket of movies I consider “popcorn horror”. These movies I’ve noticed draw in a much larger crowd, (mostly teens) who are there on dates or group dates because the movie is tense enough to get you to jump but not scary enough to make you make you unnerved once you leave. These movies are also good party-watching movies because if you were to put in on at a party, someone could walk in 40 minutes late and not have an issue figuring out what’s happening. I have no problem with these types of movies, but I think of them as fillers and not a main-course movie.
It is a very simple story. One friend reads her entire friend’s horoscopes using cursed tarot cards, and the monsters from the cards kill them as foretold. It doesn’t need compelling characters because they’re just going to get killed off soon enough. Maybe one or two of them will get a relationship subplot but everything will be resolved. As part of this, the writing isn’t that strong either.
The movie is very predictable and it gets boring if you know how these movies work. The initial encounter that causes evil happens and shortly after, the first person dies. More people die while the rest of the friends don’t believe there is any coincidence. They seek out an “expert” on the topic to find out more, but then the expert becomes more involved and dies. The movie concludes with the lead making some sort of physical or emotional sacrifice to slay the evil and all ends well. You could always mad-lib the rest of the story and you could make millions at the box office!
What the movie does well is craft some interesting visuals. The monster effects look very cool and the movie is at its best when one of the friends is being attacked. While it is predictable and each setup is the same, the attacks did wake me up each time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Tarot for sure has its audience but I’m just not there for it. Sure I’ll still pay to go see it because I want to support movie makers, but this is not a movie I think is worth rewatching.
