Quick Synopsis: It’s essentially Final Destination if the set-up was tarot cards. If the writers aren’t going to put the effort in, I’m not either.

I do love a good horror movie. I need to say that because (spoilers) this review is going to be mostly negative. With some horror films, my issues have been difficult to explain, I just haven’t vibed with it. So I suppose I should at least thank Tarot for making my issues with it easy to explain: it’s shit.

On the plus side; the performances aren’t completely terrible, and I will commend the scriptwriter for showing a believable scene of grief and how it affects you. You know that these characters are haunted by the first death, and it hangs over everything that happens. There’s also a scene at a magic show that’s pretty damn interesting and chilling to watch unfold. Plus the flashbacks are pretty well made and provide an interesting story. That is all the nice things I can say about Tarot. The rest of this review will basically be me chopping this film down with my axe of criticism.

None of the characters show much of a personality, usually with this it’s because the characters are archetypes so the writers don’t have to put too much effort into writing the characters because the audience already knows who the characters are; this person wears their football jersey away from the field? They’re a jerkass jock with a heart of gold. The guy with glasses? He’s a nerd. The woman in the cheerleader outfit? She’s a cheerleader. Tarot avoided making the characters cliches but didn’t bother to give them anything else. Watch something like the first Scream movie, you can tell by the way those characters interact that they have been friends for a long time and are comfortable in each other’s presence. You don’t get that in this. There’s no sense that these characters have much of a history with each other. There’s no closeness, they might as well be strangers.

I should say, they are sometimes on the same page, but in a weird way. They play a game where they have to say who they think a certain subject applies to (first to get pregnant etc), over three rounds the group agree fully on every choice. There’s no “two people say this, three of them say this”, they’re all in total agreement. That’s weird, and feels very fake. The lack of believable friendships isn’t helped by how inconsistent the characters are. That’s partly why it’s so hard to figure out who they are, just when you think you’ve got their personality down they say something to contradict that because that’s what the plot requires and the scriptwriter has realised that character hasn’t said anything that page yet.

Nobody seems to have any convictions or realism. The main character points out that she shouldn’t use tarot cards which don’t belong to her, she’s later shown to take tarot and horoscopes very seriously. So how do her friends convince her to break that rule? Basically just by saying “come on” and she does it. There’s no inner turmoil or conflict, she just decides to do it.

Their actions when they realise the tarot cards are killing them aren’t much better. Mainly because they come to that realisation twice. So the second time it feels a bit like “Yeah, you already know that, why are you shocked?”.

It looks bad. Traditional film language regarding horror movies boils down to shadows and lighting, here it’s just dark with no sense of “why” other than “other horror movies do it”. It’s rare for the phrase “too bleak, stopped caring” to apply to visuals, but it does so here. The audio isn’t much better, with random volume jumps replacing actual tense audio. The music choices are baffling. No teen horror movie set in 2024 should have Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones on the soundtrack.

Just, nothing about this movie works. It’s uncertain as to whether to be serious or funny and isn’t good enough at either to be an effective horror comedy. All I can say this; Tarot should be VERY thankful that Madame Web and Nightswim were released this year.