Tarot Review – There’s No Heart in These Cards

Is Mercury in retrograde or is Tarot just a middling horror movie? Written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg in their feature directorial debuts, it’s based on a book (with a much cooler title) by Nicholas Adams, called Horrorscope. Tarot follows a group of friends who partake in tarot readings after they find an old deck of tarot cards in the basement of their weekend rental home. It stars Harriet Slater (Pennyworth), Adain Bradley (Wrong Turn), Humberly González (Ginny & Georgia), Avantika (Mean Girls), Wolfgang Novogratz (The Last Summer), Larsen Thompson (The Midnight Club), and Jacob Batalon (Spider-Man: Homecoming).

After Haley (Slater) reads everyone’s horoscopes with the tarot cards, the group is murdered one by one. The survivors soon discover that the cards are haunted by an old fortune teller who uses them to get revenge on the people who wronged her and anyone else who uses them. The story is heavily reminiscent of the Final Destination franchise, with members of a group slowly dying in mysterious ways because of something that occurred earlier. That said, the kills are the most interesting parts of the movie.

The Tarot Mascots

A horror movie needs a good story or good characters to stay interesting from scene to scene, and Tarot has neither. Haley is the most well-developed character because they give her a couple of lines and a flashback to show that she had a sick mother. The film tries to interest you in her relationship with Grant (Bradley), but there’s never any chemistry or a reason to care. All the other characters barely have anything going on in their lives, except for Madeline (González) and Lucas (Novogratz), who are obviously interested in one another but don’t do anything about it. 

Paxton (Batalon) is the comic relief and performs some awful dialogue. He’s a motor mouth who says the word podcast 20 times in about 30 seconds at one point. None of the dialogue is particularly remarkable; at times, it’s cringeworthy – not in a good way. The performances range from solid to weak too, with Batalon, González, and Novogratz standing out. The rest never quite felt like real 20-somethings. None of them made any good decisions when confronted with a curse. How often do we need to see people hide from an otherworldly being in a closet, chest, or room? 

The ending is undoubtedly the weakest part of the story, and while I won’t be spoiling it here, I will say that it seems to break the rules that the film sets up at the beginning. Tarot’s opening 10 minutes set up everything you need to know about the rest of the remarkably well-paced 92-minute movie. But, by the time the credits roll, nothing matters.

Horrific Spectacle

The most admirable element of the film is its score by Joseph Bishara (The Conjuring). It fills the audience with eerie foreboding and inflates the tension during and right before some of the more terrifying moments. Speaking of which, all the deaths were handled extremely well. They are by far the most interesting part of Tarot, not only because they look great and are horrifying, but because they are woven into the heart of the plot. The deaths are connected to the readings the characters receive at the beginning of the film, so they are mostly clever and intricate. 

The designs of the creatures are also spectacular. Each one of the entities looks great, adding a malicious undertone to the deaths that wouldn’t be there otherwise. The sound mixing is also immersive, especially whenever the characters are about to die, as a warped version of their reading plays. Yet, the film is poorly lit. You can see the faces of the creatures well enough in most scenes, but you can barely make out any of the actors’ performances once they’re in a dark room. 

Tarot is a fine horror movie if you don’t think about it too much. Awkward dialogue, an awful ending, and forgettable characters make it an ultimately mediocre and forgettable experience, even if the score and death sequences are pretty good. You can probably wait until this one comes to digital services unless you’re a big fan of astrology or movies like Final Destination. Tarot releases in theaters on May 3, 2024.