REVIEW: Tarot

Horror filmmakers always try to freshen up tired old tropes. Putting a nice hat on a donkey, if you will. With that in mind, I can honestly say death via astrology is a new one for me. Enter "Tarot".

This film wastes absolutely no time on pesky things like character development, and dives right into the spooky. 7 minutes in to be exact.

A group of college kids rent a mansion in the woods. While on a hunt for additional alcohol, they stumble across a locked basement full of severed heads. Wait, that's not right. A basement full of demonic squirrels. Wrong again. Cursed objects? Sure. Cursed tarot cards.

After a cryptic reading for each of the would-be victims, they return to their lives, and discover that something ominous is pursuing them with fatal results. Think Final Destination meets It Follows, and you get the idea. In fact, one sequence involving a bridge is a little too similar to the train tracks sequence from the first Final Destination, and left a bit of a foul aftertaste.

Tarot does succeed in creating some genuinely creepy setpieces, paired with some 13 Ghosts-esque ghoulish freaks at the ready. The vagueness of astrology readings allows the writers to run wild with the death sequences, though the 4 writers (you read that right) completely take the lazy route, and essentially sabotage the film. 

I find it odd that the 2 directors were also 2 of the writers, as the writing seems to work against the directing.

The characters are quite one dimensional, and the actors do not really get much of a chance to put their mark on their roles. 

Jacob Batalon in particular, who I normally find a very fun actor, comes off incredibly annoying, as the character always doing the exact opposite of anything logical. 

Protip: When the tarot warns you of ascending numbers and a confined space, it may not be intelligent to run right into an elevator while being pursued by a ghoul. Yes, this is the level of writing at play here.

Our female lead (Harriet Slater) does a good job with what she has to work with, while the male lead is about as compelling as a chunk of drywall.

As stated before, there are some really good choices in the directing and cinematography here, but the mind numbing writing just makes the film turn completely ridiculous. The doomed characters come off as 1's and 0's getting ushered into the next sequence, without any care if it makes sense. However, there is one scene involving a Vaudevillian stage performance that is so expertly executed, that it troubles me that it didn't get to thrive within a stronger movie. And don't even get me started on the sheer stupidity of the final moments of the film. Just...ugh.

The film's opening sequence features the Howard Jones classic "Things Can Only Get Better". Should they ever decide to make a sequel to this, they should borrow Jones' title for it. Then again, the cards have already forecasted that I won't see it.