Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Look, look, look, “Tarot” is very old school; it uses the same “bunch of friends holidaying at a remote house, accidentally invoking evil spirits and dying one by one” formula, with a minor twist. It features average special effects, one or two good jump scares, but it also kept me pretty entertained until the end. I mean, did I wish it was scarier and had better character development? Hell yes. But with a tight 90-minute runtime and a six-person friend group, “Tarot” manages to be interesting and, well, somewhat unwittingly comedic in parts.
Directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, “Tarot” is based on Nicholas Adams’ 1992 novel, “Horrorscope.” It starts off with a group of college kids celebrating their friend Elise’s (Larsen Thompson) birthday in a rental property booked by her girlfriend Paige (Avantika). While the property isn’t spooky, it does have a restricted room full of creepy artifacts. Paxton (Jacob Batalon), the jokester of the group, finds an ancient, hand-drawn tarot deck with grotesque imagery. The group convinces Haley (Harriet Slater), a tarot enthusiast, to do readings for all of them. Soon, the friends start dying one by one in ways that are grisly interpretations of their tarot readings.
The rest of the group comprises Haley’s cynical ex-boyfriend Grant (Adain Bradley), Lucas (Wolfgang Novogratz), and Madeline (Humberly González). Viewers are also served a tragic 18th-century lore about how the creepy tarot cards came to be cursed, a legend that could have used more space in the narrative. Haley’s readings for her friends were mostly cryptic and metaphorical, so it was low-key comical how their deaths were almost literal interpretations of their readings. For instance, Haley says to Lucas something along the lines of “You are a rule-breaker. The hermit’s light could lead you down the wrong track,” and he accidentally breaks a rule that leads to his death. I mean, sure, it wasn’t meant to be funny, but it was. Despite having college kids as central figures, the creators do not make the plot more technology-oriented. As a result, “Tarot” feels slightly dated compared to contemporary horror movies like “Talk to Me” (definitely check it out), which fantastically blends technology with its Gen-Z protagonists.
It’s pretty obvious that either all six friends are going to die in the end, or maybe some of them or at least one of them will find a way to survive the cursed readings. There is decent suspense over how they’d die, a few scene were quite scary, even though the ghostly figures appearing through the runtime looked AI-generated and weren’t ghastly enough to evoke a visceral reaction. The climax has a few conveniently unreal moments, but delivers an end that isn’t entirely predictable. If you don’t mind watching a formulaic horror movie, you could pick “Tarot” for a casual “horror movie” night.
Rating: 6 on 10. You can stream “Tarot” on Netflix/Zee5 or rent it on Prime Video.
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