Opening Hand: Horror by Horoscope
“Tarot” is the kind of supernatural horror movie that feels like it was generated by an algorithm that only knows three things: college students, cursed object, and “died one by one.” Based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope, it tosses a group of attractive undergrads into a rented Catskills mansion, hands them an obviously cursed tarot deck dug out of a basement, and then spends the next ninety minutes punishing them for never having seen a horror film before. The real terror isn’t the monsters; it’s realizing multiple adults read this script and said, “Yes, this is ready to shoot.”
The Horror of Being Aggressively Average
This is textbook mid-tier studio horror: not offensively bad, not secretly brilliant, just deeply, stubbornly mediocre. The movie is so afraid of doing anything actually weird or disturbing that it settles into the cinematic equivalent of a shrug. Every scene feels like it’s been test-screened, sanded down, and smoothed over until nothing surprising can possibly happen. You don’t watch “Tarot”; you politely endure it, the way you’d sit through your cousin’s magic act at Thanksgiving—mildly impressed at the production effort, completely unsurprised by every trick.
Meet the Future Corpses
Our doomed ensemble—Haley, Grant, Paxton, Paige, Madeline, Lucas, Elise—might as well be named Final Girl, Ex-Boyfriend, Comic Relief, Hot One, Anxious One, Guy Number Four, and First to Die. The film gestures vaguely at personalities (Haley and Grant broke up! Paxton is goofy! Paige is stylish!) but never gives anyone enough dimension to matter. They’re less characters and more pre-labeled body bags waiting for their on-brand deaths. When Elise is bludgeoned to death by the monstrous High Priestess in an attic, it’s not tragic. It’s the movie quietly informing you: “Please adjust your expectations. This is the level we’re operating at.”
Tarot Archetypes, Now With Less Symbolism
The supposedly clever hook is that each student’s death matches the card they drew: the High Priestess, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, the Magician, the Fool, the Devil, Death. On paper, that’s a fun structure. On screen, it’s a parade of “Oh, right, that’s the one” moments, where you remember the card just in time to watch the movie do the most literal interpretation possible. The Hermit? Train-track death. The Hanged Man? Guess what happens. The Magician? Cut in half like a discount magic show. It’s like the filmmakers Googled “tarot meanings,” skimmed the first sentence, and said, “Good enough, let’s build a death scene.”
Haunted by Exposition
No modern horror movie is complete without a lore dump, and “Tarot” serves one up like cold leftovers. Enter Alma, the tarot expert, whose job is to sit down and explain the entire backstory: cursed deck, vengeful astrologer, dead count’s wife, massacres over the centuries, tragic suicide, eternal curse. It’s all very dramatic on paper and utterly lifeless in execution. The scene plays like someone reading a Wikipedia plot summary out loud while the rest of the cast nods earnestly. Alma herself has the most interesting story in the film—she’s the sole survivor of a previous massacre—but instead of letting us feel that, the movie just uses her as an exposition vending machine, then kills her with a card like she failed to read the fine print on her own profession.
Final Girl vs. Final Draft
Harriet Slater’s Haley is stuck with the unenviable task of being the Final Girl in a film that forgot to fully write her. She’s supposed to be wrestling with grief over her mother’s death, guilt over the tarot reading, and the strain of her breakup with Grant. Instead, the movie reduces all of that to a few solemn conversations and a climactic moment where she gives the astrologer’s spirit the Death card and lets go of her feelings. It’s less catharsis and more emotional checkbox: “Insert healing here.” When Haley and Grant reconcile at the end, it doesn’t feel earned; it feels like the script remembered at the last minute that test audiences really like when hot people get back together.
Jump Scares by Numbers
The scares are assembled with all the passion of someone following a DIY horror kit. Creepy attics? Check. Flickering lights? Check. Something lurking just out of frame until the music screeches? Double check. There’s a brief thrill the first time a tarot monster appears, but they quickly blur together into a generic mass of growls, contortions, and prosthetics. The camera lunges, the soundtrack blasts, a character gasps, and you flinch half a second out of reflex—not fear. It’s not that the film is completely scare-free; it’s that you’ve seen every one of these beats before, executed better, with characters you actually cared about.
The Supporting Cast Deserved a Better Fate
There are glimmers of fun buried in the mess. Jacob Batalon’s Paxton has genuine comic timing and an everyman presence that could have anchored a more self-aware version of this story. Avantika’s Paige has enough charisma to carry an entire movie on her own, but here she mostly serves as cannon fodder for the Magician’s saw. Olwen Fouéré shows up as Alma and radiates haunted authority—you instantly believe this woman has seen some things—but she’s out of the picture before the film can really use her. It’s like the deck itself cursed the casting director: “You may assemble a good ensemble, but I shall ensure they’re used poorly.”
Cheap Deck, Big Payout
There is something bleakly funny about a film this forgettable being such a financial success. On an $8 million budget, “Tarot” more than made its money back, proving once again that if you slap together a mid-budget horror flick with a catchy hook and market it hard enough, the audience will show up. In that sense, the producers are the real magicians here: they turned a handful of clichés into nearly fifty million dollars. You almost respect the hustle. Almost. The movie itself feels like the cinematic embodiment of drawing the Devil card: you technically get what you wanted, but the cost is your dignity.
The Curse of Could-Have-Been
What makes “Tarot” frustrating isn’t that it’s unwatchable; it’s that you can see the bones of a much better film underneath. A cursed tarot deck tied to centuries of violence? A survivor like Alma with her own haunting story? College kids whose fate is literally written in the cards? That’s fertile ground for real dread, or biting satire, or at least some inventive kills. Instead, the movie plays everything so straight and safe that the curse feels less like a supernatural force and more like a studio mandate: “Nothing too weird. Nothing too challenging. Just enough blood to justify the rating.”
Final Reading: Reversed, and Forgettable
By the time Haley and Grant walk away alive, reconciled, and presumably ready to never touch a deck again, you’re not relieved—they survived—you’re relieved you did. The Death card turns out to be about transformation and catharsis, but in this case, it’s probably just your interest in ever watching “Tarot” again. If this movie were a card in its own deck, it’d be something like The Missed Opportunity: a glossy, bland warning that just because you’ve got a great premise doesn’t mean the future is bright. Shuffle it back in the pile and draw literally anything else.
