Tarot review: 2024 horror takes a nosedive

2024 has already been a year of impeccable horror — but that comes to an abrupt stop thanks to Tarot, not just the lesser of its genre contemporaries, but one of the worst films of the year so far.

In a year of middling commercial releases, horror movies have undoubtedly come out on top. After The First Omen, Immaculate, and Late Night with the Devil, all good things must come to an end — and that run of excellence stops with Tarot. Neither likely to make the best horrors of all time list nor the best movies of 2024, the film is likely to follow the legacy of director Spenser Cohen’s Moonfall and Expend4bles.

Tarot is a tale of a group of friends — you’re unlikely to catch their names as their importance questionably changes — who stay at a mansion in the Catskills and decide to read their horoscopes with an abandoned tarot deck. Soon enough, each person’s main card (also known as the Major Arcana) comes to life, hunting down their victim to act out their reading in the worst way possible.

In short, it all doesn’t quite work. Not only are the gang’s adventures poorly written and thought through, but the execution of their — ahem — executions doesn’t leave a satisfying taste. However, there is one shining star in the storyline, but even she might have better places to be.

A paper-thin plot held together by stereotypes

Arguably, the best horrors have enough narrative rope to follow, but there’s still enough held back to keep you guessing. In Tarot, everything from impending death to clues that drive the story forward is painfully spelled out, almost as if the viewer is watching a radio play instead of an innovative feature. This isn’t helped by the crushing use of generational stereotyping, although this is also the only glue that holds the film together. The entire chain of events springboards from Hailey’s (Harriet Slater) love of tarot, with the entire basement of their rental mansion coincidentally happening to be kitted out with a collector’s stash of astrological goodies.

But it’s all okay as Hailey is just so, like, into tarot now. A more harrowing and grounding backstory for why is explained later, but Tarot does itself no favors with the setup. From characters being unable to tear themselves away from their phones to genre problems being explained away by Mercury being in retrograde, viewers have to wonder if the entire one-by-one death plot sets teens up to be the butt of the joke. Paxton (Jacob Patalon) is possibly the biggest cliche of the bunch, too caught up in his own comedic sub-plot to take any of his friends seriously. In fact, it’s astonishing how little the group seems to care that their friends are dying

While none of our main characters are convincing or worth investing in — and the acting isn’t that desirable either — there is one pawn in the game of cursed tarot that balances them out. Olwen Fouéré is an Irish scream queen with an impressive back catalog of horror classics, giving a Royal Shakespeare Company performance in the face of MTV surface-level humor. Here, she plays Alma, a woman akin to Professor Trelawny if she listened to too many true crime podcasts. She’s criminally under-used, but perhaps that’s with good reason, as viewers will likely see her featured in the trailer for the more promising The Watchers before the film begins.

Even the horror isn’t doing its job

Sony Pictures Releasing

While Tarot‘s plot is running on the thin fumes of teenage fascination with horoscopes, what viewers see on screen does little to sweeten the horror-laced pot. What’s startlingly concerning is just how inefficient each Arcana is at killing its intended victim, needing multiple half-hearted tries before succeeding at its kill. The jumpscares are there, but are seldom effective, toying with their prey for too long to deliver any hair-raising blows.

There is a dim light in the form of where these kills take place, not confined to the offending mansion like other rival films this year, such as Abigail. Instead, the Arcanas move wherever their victims take them, blending more traditional horror elements into modern-day situations. This can sometimes be jarring, but overall adds impact to what Cohen and co-director Anna Halberg are trying to achieve, but it’s not enough to save things on its own.

At least Tarot can vouch for its own consistency, staying baffling from beginning to end thanks to an unbelievable and contradictory closing scene. If the movie was trying to take its own scare legacy seriously, it certainly shot itself in the foot. Where Tarot had earlier chosen to spell its plot out, there’s little explanation for why this final scene plays out — but after all that demon dodging, we could probably cut a clouded brain some slack.

Tarot review score: 1/5

This group of teens is never getting their Airbnb deposit back, and Tarot is unlikely to win back its audience either. It’s perhaps the weakest horror release of the year so far, and its standing as a 2024 favorite isn’t looking too good either.

Find even more amazing new movies and TV shows streaming this month, or dive into all the new true crime documentaries around right now. If that’s not enough, find out what’s in store this year for K-dramas coming to Netflix.