Netflix Supernatural Horror Turns Superstition Into Slaughter

Tarot begins with a group of seven friends who on a whim decide to rent a mansion in the Catskills for a birthday celebration. I immediately disliked these kids because their sense of entitlement is evident from the opening scene, and they never really let up. When they run out of alcohol, they have to decide to either drive drunk to the nearest liquor store or raid the massive house for a hidden liquor cabinet.

They collectively decide that the best course of action is to break into the padlocked basement full of ancient spooky artifacts instead of calling it a night. When they find a creepy box full of tarot cards that looks like it’s been responsible for countless other deaths before being rediscovered, Haley (Harriet Slater) decides to give everybody a reading because she’s an expert and authority on the subject (how convenient!).

The tarot readings are all cryptic, but you won’t spend much time trying to read between the lines because it’s all spelled out for you in the most patronizing way possible.

For example, Madeline (Humberly Gonzalez) gets The Hanged Man card during her reading, which I guess is a form of foreshadowing if you’re not expecting some unknown demon to eventually kill her by hanging later in the movie. Lucas gets The Hermit card, and during his reading, Haley mentions that he needs to make sure his life is “on the right track.” If your guesswork is as good as mine, you’ll probably deduce that Lucas ends up at a train station at some point in the movie.

I’d run through every friend’s reading and fate, but you get the point.

Naturally, the source of terror in Tarot is poorly explained once the friends make their way to visit Alma Astron (Olwen Fouere), an elderly woman who just so happens to be an expert in tarot cards, and is familiar with the same cursed deck the friends stole from the mansion. In fact, she was the last known surviving victim of the last round of curses that claimed the lives of her friends, so she gives a quick junk-science rundown on how to reverse the spell before they all end up dead.

Tarot has the most contrived horror plot I’ve ever witnessed, and if I had to compare it to another title for context, I’d put it in the same category as 2003’s Darkness Falls in the sense that the real terror comes in the form of laughably bad CGI. When Jacob Batalon’s Paxton character, who’s by design a form of comic relief, is less funny than the actual monster reveals, you know you have an absolute clunker on your hands. But the real clincher for me, however, is how predictable every single aspect of this movie proved to be.

GFR SCORE

This is normally where I try to think of what redeeming qualities Tarot has, or who would actually enjoy this movie, and honestly, I’m drawing a blank. I guess it makes for a decent gateway film that functions as a horror trope primer for a younger audience, but even then I’ve seen it done better. But I will admit, I did find a small amount of satisfaction in watching a group of people get what they had coming to them after pretty much being responsible for their own misfortune in the first place.

If you’re into that kind of thing, you can stream Tarot on Netflix.