Extremely Dumb Fun is in the Cards with Supernatural Teen Horror Tarot (2024)

Title: Tarot

First Non-Festival Release: May 1, 2024 (Theatrical Release,)

Director: Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg

Writer: Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg, Jacob Batalon

Runtime: 92 Minutes

Starring: Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Jacob Batalon

Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here

Tarot cards date back to the 15th century and were originally meant to be used as playing cards. Nowadays, these cards can also be used for cartomancy, or fortune telling through randomly selecting cards.

An avid tarot card reader, Haley (Harriet Slater) is pressured into doing a reading for herself and friends at their airbnb after the group finds a pack of particularly gnarly cards in the basement. Breaking the one major rule of card reading – never read from someone else’s deck – Haley inadvertently curses the group. Now, they must face off against the icons from the cards they drew, or die trying.

Painfully generic but ultimately fun, Tarot is a good example of wasted potential in supernatural teen horror.

Taking inspiration from scores of teen horror films before it, Tarot does little to deviate from the traditional structure of supernatural slashers. Unabashedly cashing in on the rise in interest in tarot card reading, Tarot gets in-your-face with its premise pretty early on. Within the first few minutes when Haley is reading everyone’s horoscopes it is evident exactly what you’re getting into with Tarot. Its rapid-fire yet shallow characterization and obvious foreshadowing leave little to the imagination. Formulaic to the extreme, nearly every moment of Tarot is predictable, following a pattern of story beats that anyone who has seen a handful of horror films can anticipate a mile away.

Cheap interpersonal drama and empty characters make the story even less impressive. Relationship woes, jealous friends, and a refusal to believe in the supernatural sums up the interactions between the largely flat characters. Outside of their archetypes and horoscopes, there isn’t much to the characters before they are dispatched by the looming specters of their fates. Since the action starts so suddenly, the characters have even less time to react to their predetermined deaths. It’s not until the group is whittled down to five that they have any clue as to what is going on, then four before they all are on the same page, leaving little room for growth or compelling dynamics. In the end, relationship drama between Haley and Grant overshadows all.

Despite all this, Tarot does manage to maintain a level of playfulness and fun throughout the film, even if it isn’t quite put together. The silliness of its concept comes to life as the characters piece together how their current situation came to be. This leads them down a rabbit hole of astrology, a mysterious pack of deadly tarot cards, and an expert in its evil who happens to live within driving distance. Nothing is too serious here, which makes the teen horror movie much more palatable than some of the other similarly silly efforts that make the mistake of playing their ridiculousness straight.

Its strongest saving grace comes in the form of the impressive designs of the various entities conjured from the cards. Since Tarot is PG-13, it has to make up for its lack of gore, and thankfully its rich designs do a lot for it. The creature designs are both intricate and haunting. It’s clear that the design team had plenty of freedom to make the baddies menacing despite the story’s limitations. While the scares are largely lacking, save for the incredible sequence with The Magician, the entities don’t necessarily behave in the harrowing ways one might expect from their appearances.

Tarot makes no promises of being anything more than an easily digestible, paint-by-the-numbers gateway horror film primed for younger viewers. And that’s okay! Horror for entertainment’s sake is important and sometimes by following the formula, it makes it easier for those less accustomed to the genre to enjoy it. Genre veterans can appreciate the wicked designs of the villains while understanding that the vapid teenagers aren’t giving much in terms of development or story. Whether or not you want to tempt fate, Tarot offers enough to make it a fun watch, whether you’re running scared or laughing hysterically.

Overall Score? 6/10