Tarot Movie Review

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Movie Synopsis

As you might expect, the film opens on a group of friends celebrating a birthday at a rented mansion. One look at this mansion and you start to wonder why they remotely chose to rent this house.

The group decides to search the house for extra booze after they realize they’ve run low, and are, of course, in the middle of nowhere. Instead of alcohol, they find an old deck of tarot cards. As luck would have it, one of the friends knows how to read them. Each friend is given a disturbing and haunting card, which as we’ll come to find, alludes their untimely (and rather gruesome) deaths.

The friends are slowly killed off one by one and eventually the group realizes the cards are responsible. After some searching, the remaining members of the friend group find out that the deck is not only responsible for these murders, but also for other massacres throughout the decades.

Here’s why. The deck belonged to an astrologer some centuries ago. She cursed it to get revenge on people who wronged her and whoever reads from the deck is also cursed. It’s a really unfortunate “wrong deck, wrong time” kind of thing. This is all told to them by a tarot expert, Alma, who eventually becomes a victim of the curse when they go back to the original rented mansion to destroy the deck.

Our female protagonist, Haley, confronts her own grief and the spirit of the astrologer who cursed the deck in order to save herself, break the curse, and keep her remaining two friends—one being her ex-boyfriend—alive.

Gore Score

0
  • Scare Score
  • 3
  • Camp Score
  • 1
  • Acting Score
  • 3
  • Music Score
  • 5
  • Rewatchability Score
  • 1
  • Originality Score
  • 2
  • Pacing Score
  • 2
  • Cinematography Score
  • 4
  • Attentativness Score
  • 4
  • Plot Twist Score
  • 1

My initial thought was, “Great, another classic rent a house in the middle of nowhere high school drama horror film.” They run out of booze and decide to explore the house as if some secret bar exists that they can loot. Once they found the tarot cards instead of a bottle of Jack, I knew it was on.

I want to say that I did find parts of this movie entertaining. Let’s start with some of my critiques before ending on a positive note.

There’s a level of predictability that perhaps I’ve outgrown when it comes to horror films. As they start using the tarot cards, they openly acknowledge that it’s bad luck to use someone else’s deck, yet continue to read every person with someone else’s deck. Not only that, but as the one friend reads, they are essentially giving you the blueprint for who is going to be haunted and eventually killed, and how. Fine, it’s part of the plot so take it for granted, but as these kids start dying rather gruesome deaths, it’s really hard not to sit there and say, “No sh*t.”

Sony Pictures Entertainment via YouTube

I think the biggest critique for me is that scriptwriters, producers, and anyone in entertainment will always advise a writer to show something, not tell something. Tarot tells you everything, and as a viewer, there’s no fun in figuring anything out because your hand is held all 90 minutes.

While the plot and the monster-demon-ghost-things were rather cheesy, I admit that parts of the film were entertaining. There were a few decent jump scares that got me, but the biggest compliment I have to pay is to the sound editor. There was an excellent use of sound to evoke fear and it actually felt as though the sound took you on the journey. 

We’ll explain the ending below, so without spoiling anything, all I’ll say about the ending is that it was very powerful. For a rather cliche horror plot, I was surprised at how much I felt for both entities involved.

All that said, I would recommend this movie to someone who wants to dip their toe into horror. My die-hard horror-loving friends would cancel my Netflix subscription if I told them to watch this.

Main image courtesy of Forbes via Sony Pictures Entertainment/Screen Gems

Haley and Grant, her ex-boyfriend at the time, are the only remaining people from the friend group still alive. They’ve gone to the house to find and destroy the deck but the Astrologer appears. What Haley realizes is that the cards curse whoever has a reading done to them. Her idea is to do a reading of the Astrologer and reverse the curse back on her.

As Grant fends off his own curse, Haley does the reading and finds that the Astrologer is still grieving, unable to heal after her daughter’s death. In an attempt to find common ground, Haley sees herself in the Astrologer since Haley blames herself for not being able to save her mother from an illness when Haley was younger.

As the Astrologer grasps Haley’s hand, desperately trying to not let go, Haley reassures her that she can go. The Astrologer is released and the deck is destroyed, burnt cards raining down around Haley and Grant.

A wonderful twist at the very end occurs as Haley and Grant are walking down the street after this wild ordeal with the paranormal. Earlier in the film, we see their friend, Paxton, in an elevator with The Fool, one of the curses that he was given. Unlike all of their other friends, we don’t see Paxton die, but the impression we get is that he was brutally murdered by the jester-looking manifestation of the curse. However, as the two walk down the street, a car pulls up and…Paxton appears, alive and well. Turns out his roommate needed to take the elevator and, unintentionally, saved his life.

  • Scare Score
  • 3
  • Camp Score
  • 1
  • Acting Score
  • 3
  • Music Score
  • 5
  • Rewatchability Score
  • 1
  • Originality Score
  • 2
  • Pacing Score
  • 2
  • Cinematography Score
  • 4
  • Attentativness Score
  • 4
  • Plot Twist Score
  • 1

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