Capsule Review: Tarot (2024) – A Missed Opportunity of a Potentially Macabre, Final Destination-style Horror Thriller

At one point in Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg’s feature-length directorial debut, a character voiced out “f*** fate“. Yes, that’s right except I want to say “f*** Tarot“. And why did the studio figure it would be a great idea to change the clever title of Nicholas Adams’ 1992 novel Horrorscope to the current generic-sounding name?

The pre-credits opening scene, however, gets off to a foreboding start as we are introduced to a group of seven college friends celebrating a birthday somewhere in a rented remote mansion. The birthday girl is Elise (Larsen Thompson), who later insists Haley (Harriet Slater) read everyone’s fortunes after they discover an old wooden box containing hand-painted tarot cards in the basement. Haley reluctantly fulfils her wish as she begins unveiling thirteen cards on the floor in a circle and explains to each of them at a time.

Later, one by one start to meet their respective dooms as predicted by the tarot card reading. This leads to a series of Final Destination-style deaths except for the audience-friendly PG-13 rating means the movie has to play safe (read: toned down) with the blood and gore.

The introduction of the hand-painted characters from the tarot cards such as Death, The Magician, The High Priestess and The Fool that come to life to haunt them are intriguing. Imagine the potential that could have made them the new icons in today’s horror-movie era. But too bad Cohen and Halberg, who also co-wrote the screenplay, are seemingly clueless about what to do with these horror characters. They just appear in the dark and terrorise each of their ill-fated human victims using the same old predictable jump scares. The problem is lacking creativity that such a horror movie like Tarot desperately needs to make them work.

The same also goes for the half-baked idea surrounding escaping or reversing fate from the tarot card reading. What’s left instead is a monotonous, rinse-and-repeat storytelling that goes around in a circle. All the obligatory dark lighting and things that go bump in the night moments are barely enough to sustain my interest. If only Cohen and Halberg had been more inventive in their visual and narrative approach to delivering the murder set pieces and its thematic subject matters of tarot cards and astrology, it might have been a different story altogether.

Tarot does attempt to dig deeper beyond the who’s-going-to-die-next scenario. There’s a backstory halfway through the movie revolving around the origin of the tarot cards but then again, it’s all perfunctorily told instead of finding ways to make it more interesting.

As with the tradition of a horror movie, we have comic relief here in the form of Jacob Batalon, who plays Paxton. He’s the ideal person to play such a role, given his experience in the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy as Peter Parker’s best friend, Ned Leeds. His character in Tarot can be annoying at times, even though his goofy and likeable persona manages to offset the flaw. Harriet Slater, best known for her role in TV’s Pennyworth, delivers a decent but unspectacular lead role as Haley while the rest of the characters are pretty much what you would expect in a horror movie straight out of the assembly line.

The movie also enlisted Joseph Bishara, best known for scoring The Conjuring Universe film series but the music in Tarot is surprisingly devoid of a dread-inducing soundscape.