Tarot Review
Tarot (2024) Film Review, a movie directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, written by Nicholas Adams, Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg and starring Harriet Slater, Avantika, Jacob Batalan, Olwen Fouéré, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, Wolfgang Novogratz, Adain Bradley, Stasa Nikolic, James Swanton and Alan Wells.
Tarot had the markings of a great horror movie but with its cheesy execution and “PG-13” rating, the movie’s scares are limited and the overall impact of the scares are lessened significantly by the fact that the acting is usually mediocre at best. While there’s a terrifying film to be made about astrology, Tarot is not it, unfortunately. The movie tries, occasionally, to maintain audience interest and it’s certainly not the worst film of its kind but it’s still a botched up attempt to terrify audiences out with friends at the theater or going to the movies for date night.
The opening credits come on 15 minutes or so into the movie which runs less than 90 minutes if not factoring in the lame closing credits which are played as if the film was a comedy with goofy music. Directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, Tarot could have probably have gained more tension from an even darker tone and an “R” rating, of course. Because of the lackluster conception and structure of the film, it falls apart due to its construction.
Harriet Slater stars in the picture as Haley who, during a birthday party out in the middle of nowhere, finds a deck of tarot cards in a box and tells her friends their fates. It’s all harmless fun, right? As Haley starts predicting the fates of her chums, she shuffles the cards when she’s done with one of them and then asks, “Who’s next?” At the end, she makes sure everybody got their turn. The problem is the fate of those whose futures were read will soon be in jeopardy. A young guy soon has good luck and wins $700 on a lottery scratcher ticket but then meets a dire and unfortunate end. The best way for Haley and company to get to the bottom of things is to find an older psychic (Olwen Fouéré) who predicted some murders previously even though she’s been written off as a hack by the general public.
The movie has some jesters and creepy looking devilish figures doing wicked things to the cast. Avantika of the recent remake of Mean Girls is in the movie as one of the victims, Paige, who gets put into a box and then sawed up. Avantika may be a one-hit wonder. She was funny in Mean Girls but doesn’t do much here to salvage the picture. This is one of the lesser performances of the year which would have “Razzie” written all over it if she was a bigger star than she is. Jacob Batalan, as a friend named Paxton, is unsuccessfully employed as comic relief but Avantika is not funny at all. They could have used Avantika to lighten up the movie and, instead, chosen to waste her talents here.
There are a lot of interesting concepts explored in Tarot. Astrology and the signs associated with it have always interested me but the movie is half-baked when dealing with this premise. We’re never quite sure how Haley is able to do what she does with the cards and with predicting the personalities of the people she calls her friends. Haley seems to have a natural born ability to do this but the film leaves the audience hanging as to what drives Haley to have such a fascination with the tarot cards. When a card reveals “death,” most people would be scared out of their minds but Haley decides to try to fight back and take her destiny back from those who wish to erase her future. It all sounds good on paper but plays razor thin on-screen with less depth than was expected, even for a horror picture.
The performance by Harriet Slater is promising of better things to come for the actress. She seems to have a lot of charisma, judging from this performance and it would have been served sufficiently by a more complicated story line. Typically, characters end up getting killed in these films but there’s always one that you think is dead that comes back at the end. Tarot plays its hand of cliches like they’re a science. That being said, as the creepy older lady who tells fortunes, Olwen Fouéré, delivers some credibility to an otherwise cliched role.
Tarot is still creepy when it wants to be. The atmosphere is spooky, especially in the film’s second half, but the story is stale because it doesn’t take the material in a new direction. The film is rather flat and doesn’t even leave a lot of wiggle room for a sequel. It’s like the filmmakers knew this would be “it” for this premise based on the quality of their movie. That’s sad because the previews made the film look intensely scary. While you may enjoy a scare or two here or there, the cheesiness of the overall project is too visible to really be spooked out by the disappointing Tarot.
Rating: 5/10
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