Tarot movie review: Mediocre horror film fails to deliver thrills or chills

Tarot movie review

Film: Tarot
Cast: Harriet Slater, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, Avantika, Wolfgang Novogratz, Adain Bradley, and Jacob Batalon
Directors: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg
Rating: 1.5/5
Runtime: 92 min

A standard issue genre film, this one relies on regular by-the-numbers tropes to score it's kills. A group of friends rent a mansion in a remote location to spend a weekend. They are just six of them so why would they want to rent a huge mansion? Ridiculous, if you ask me. Never mind that.

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The lackluster script adapted from 1992 YA novel Horrorscope, written by Nicholas Adams (pseudonym) , fails to generate suspense or thrills. The uninspired execution is another big drawback. The group of college mates are having fun and they soon find themselves out of beer. When they raid the fridge they realise they are out of stock so next thing they do is break open the door to the cellar which clearly says ‘Keep Out - Danger." That's where they discover the Tarot cards and other antique paraphernalia.

The fates of the college friends take a sinister turn following the ominous revelations of the mysterious tarot deck. The characters eventually find themselves ensnared in a web of predestined doom.The cast, which also includes breakout Indian actress Avantika and the SPIDER-MAN trilogy's Jacob Batalon, find themselves in a bad movie soon-to-get-worse. They even have the temerity to ask each other, "Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?"

It's a conventional story arc, There's no attempt made to give any of the characters a backstory or enough character traits to make them memorable. The dialogue is poorly written, the humor is obvious and unfunny, the characters show up as stupid, the horror tricks seem cheesy and the story is full of boring cliched, predictable twists.

There's neither innovation nor creativity holding fort here. The plotting is thin, there's no self-referential humor and the elementary chills are way too obvious to be scary. The narrative relies on successive jump scares, there's no sense of urgency nor is there any semblance of atmospheric dread to carry the experience through. This one is a rather feeble and forgettable horror experience.