“Tarot” - Film Review
Horror movies are filled with ghouls, monsters, and demons of all kinds. It’s a challenge to find a new corner of darkness that hasn’t been used to terrify audiences. Even death has been personified into an unseeable force in the Final Destination series of the early-aughts. It’s likely from that collection of films that Tarot drew the bulk of its inspiration. The main entity is a haunted deck of tarot cards found by some college seniors at an Airbnb in the Catskills. Like the Final Destination films before it, Tarot sees a group of young people facing off against an unseeable force that seeks revenge.
Haley (Harriet Slater), Grant (Adain Bradley), Paxton (Jacob Batalon), Paige (Avantika), Madeline (Humberly González), Lucas (Wolfgang Novogratz), and Elise (Larsen Thompson) are spending the weekend at a beautiful mansion in the Catskills to celebrate Elise’s birthday. The trip was planned by Elise’s girlfriend Paige, and the group spends much of their time drinking and playing party games. Once they run out of beer, they figure there must be some alcohol hidden in the house. Instead of more beer, however, they find a deck of tarot cards and push Haley into giving all the friends a reading. After they return to campus, members of the group start dying in ways that eerily relate to their tarot readings. The surviving friends must unravel a centuries-old mystery to save themselves.
courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing
In recent years, there’s been a push for elevated horror movies that offer more than simple scares. Mike Flanagan and Jordan Peele’s works have been at the forefront of this genre, and while that’s what I personally gravitate toward, there’s something to be said for popcorn horror. The kind of movie that’s not too scary, but will likely be responsible for nightmares at a slumber party. The kills in Tarot, while inventive, are largely shown off-screen. After all, the film only holds a PG-13 rating, and it feels like it would fall closely to PG if the rating was based on gore alone. That being said, some of the characters from the tarot cards that have come to life are eerie. For seasoned horror fans, Tarot won’t cause any loss of sleep, but for those who are new to the genre, it’s a great first entry.
Like Final Destination, Tarot requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and features a group of young people who continuously make the dumbest decisions possible. It’s as if Tarot was made by someone who grew up watching the Final Destination movies and wanted to put their own astrological spin on it. The film falls apart if you put too much thought into it, but that much is true for quite a lot of movies in the supernatural horror genre. Tarot is a solid-enough introduction for new horror fans, and it just might not be scary enough for those well-versed in the world of all things spooky.
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.