Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Tarot Blu-ray Movie Review

"Welcome to the circle. One more at the heart..."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown August 12, 2024

Long, exasperated groan. That was my reaction to Tarot, not by film's end, but at several key points throughout its utterly generic, horribly derivative mish-mash of so, so, soooo many genre movies that have come before it. Offering next to nothing new and only reinventing the wheel if the term means to take something circular and fashion it into a square, Tarot offers up a tiresome lineup of teens (played by adults of course) who meander headlong towards their deaths as yet another curse takes its toll on whatever unlucky souls happen to cross paths with its accursed totem, in this case a deck of, you guessed it, tarot cards. (Try not to think of Cabin In the Woods when our hapless teens stumble across their doom. You'll fail. But try anyway.) There are one or two inventive kills and creatures, though very little of it actually proves memorable. (Struggling to remember key details at the moment and I just watched the film two days ago.) And there are a small handful of effective beats, despite a gnawing sense of redundancy and predictability wherein the only surprise is that the ending doesn't feature a last-minute gotcha.

Where does that leave Tarot? Nowhere good. The bargain bin... if it's lucky, and if such a place still exists in a world of online shopping. A Black Friday sale item for sure. But more likely a Blu-ray that will sit on the proverbial shelf until stores and sites discount it enough to trick unsuspecting consumers into a purchase.

In readings, Death can mean the end of something or the start of something new. But in your case, it just means death. Fate doesn't have to be a curse. We can choose to let go.

Written and directed by Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen (the latter of whom penned Moonfall), Tarot follows seven teens -- played by Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Spider-Man's Jacob Batalon, Avantika, Humberly Gonzalez, Wolfgang Novogratz, and Larsen Thompson -- on an Airbnb vacation to a mansion in the Catskills, where a quick intrusion into a locked basement reveals all sorts of supernatural items ripe for barely innocent experimentation. The teens focus on a strange deck of tarot cards, though, lugging it upstairs for a creepy reading thanks to the oh so convenient experience of lead-girl-in-waiting Haley (Slater). The deck is eeeeevil, of course, and so is unleashed an ancient curse that haunts and kills the teens, one by one, as the survivors scramble to find a way to break the spell and walk away unscathed. And wouldn't you know it? A survivor of a previous reading (Olwen Fouéré) emerges to give the kids hope.

The problem? Tarot barely establishes its rules of the game, yet somehow still manages to toss them aside and eagerly break each one. Deaths that are meant to look like everyday accidents? Abandoned quickly in favor of a leering demon-magician sawing a teen in half in a stage show attended by, um, zombies. Murder most foul that's impossible to escape? Sort of. As long as some random person doesn't interrupt the dead witch's flow. Meticulous kills that come in the order of the readings and feature offings that pair with each person's reading? Maybe? Yes? No? It's difficult to tell, especially when so much of Tarot wanders off the rails, presumably as the writers became increasingly bored ripping off the Final Destination series wholesale. If there's any saving grace, it's the film's runtime, which clips away mercifully fast as the teens -- none of which you'll find yourself rooting for -- die quick, gruesome deaths (by PG-13 standards) that accelerate as the credits approach. By film's end I was grateful for the sudden quickening of storytelling and pacing, happy to check out of such a third-rate chiller.

That said, the beasties at the center of Tarot's curse are admittedly scary, in a cartoon-come-to-unholy-life sort of way. Frights and jump scares are too obviously staged, limiting the creatures' potential, but somewhere in here is a cast of demon spawn worthy of further series entries. Will Tarot spawn any sequels? Perhaps, but certainly no more than low budget, direct-to-streaming follow-ups with diminishing returns. More likely, this is as good as it gets in the already dead or dying tarot-verse, wasting a semi-decent concept on cheap haunted house boos and oohs.

Tarot Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tarot is an exceedingly dark horror film. Sometimes so dark that it's difficult to discern what's happening in the shadows. That's hardly the fault of Sony's 1080p/AVC-encoded encode, though, which does its absolute best to support the movie's bleak cinematography even when blackness threatens to consume the image. Colors are strong and able when they appear, with lovely moments of warm firelit oranges, lifelike skintones, and primary punch. And contrast is quite vibrant, even if it grows heavier and heavier, giving way to readily apparent crush that harms shadow delineation. Fortunately, overall detail remains quite impressive, with razor-wire edges and refined textures. The creature fx suffer a bit under the scrutiny of high definition, sure, but that's fairly par for the course. There at least isn't any significant banding or blocking to muck up the works, meaning Sony's encode is proficient and precise.

Tarot Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tarot features a run-of-the-mill DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that enhances the film's many, many jump scares but little else. It's not there's anything wrong with the mix; just that the movie's so-so sound design is a bit weak, a bit hammy and a bit too ho-hum to raise the hair on the back of your neck. Dialogue is clear and nicely centered, although it comes on a touch strong at times. Likewise, directional effects and the film's score are effective, but are somewhat inconsistent from scene to scene. Moments of tension and outright terror are handled much more precisely, and do create a welcome sense of dread (even if Tarot's uneven tone seems eager to undermine such strides), albeit not often enough to produce a masterclass experience. LFE output is solid, thankfully, and the soundfield is decently enveloping, creating a sense of place and space that handles the film's frights with ease.

Tarot Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Twist of Fate: Making the Film (HD, 6 minutes) - A brief featurette that finds cast and crew chatting about the film, its themes and real-world beliefs in the supernatural. Overbaked and uninteresting.

• Circle of Friends (HD, 7 minutes) - Meet the cast and their characters.

• Killer Outtakes (HD, 3 minutes) - A standard gag reel. Hardly anything killer.

• Previews (HD)

Tarot Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tarot is a mess. So much so that two stars may be a tad generous. Still, some solid creature design and encounters help take some of the sting out of the more problematic and ridiculous scenes of tepid character development, storytelling and horror sequencing, allowing Tarot to pull off a few small miracles in the midst of its dumpster fire. Sony's Blu-ray release is a bit better, with a solid video and audio package, but a lack of substantial extras and no real replay value make this one a big ol' miss.