Tarot
Seven students are hastened towards their final destination after a Tarot reading seals their fate.
A candle in the wind: Larsen Thompson
Photo Credit: Slobodan Pikula, Courtesy of Sony Pictures
There are two things that groups of young friends should never do. At least, in the movies. One, they should never hire a place “in the middle of nowhere” for a bit of R & R. Two, they should never flirt with the occult. In Danny and Michael Philippou’s deeply unsettling Talk to Me (2022), a group of young friends tempt fate when they engage in a party trick involving a cursed, severed hand. It doesn’t go well. The unfamiliar surroundings of Adelaide, a sympathetic heroine (Sophie Wilde) and some ingenious sound design wreaked its horrific rewards.
Here, we are back to a familiar template. We already know that the teenage bait of Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead and The Blair Witch Project all met terrible ends far, far from their home comforts. But Tarot, adapted from Nicholas Adams’ 1992 novel Horrorscope (good title), borrows more from Final Destination (2000) – and its various sequels.
In Tarot, the healthily multicultural students hire a mansion in the Catskills and, running out of beer, break into the basement which, to their disappointment, is full of “old, astrological stuff” and “weird, creepy shit.” Amongst the creepy bric-a-brac is an ancient box containing a set of elaborate, hand-painted Tarot cards. Haley (the Leicester-born Harriet Slater) is a dab hand at Tarot and proceeds to read her six friends’ horoscopes, all of whom were born in different months (what were the chances)? The next day they head back to campus in their fancy SUVs and their fates start to play out…
There should be a new word for cliché as even the word has become hackneyed and here every horror contrivance is trotted out for our delectation, from sudden apparitions and creaking doors to ominous hooded figures and distant giggling (etc). Where Tarot differs from others of its ilk is that the scenes of slaughter are so underlit that it’s hard to discern the mode of death. Not, that is, until the gruesome demise of one girl (which we can see a mile off), when she finds herself trapped in a box on a magician’s stage. When dealing with the supernatural, anything is up for grabs, even the sudden appearance of a Victorian playhouse with its own audience of decrepit, gurning onlookers. This is the stuff of nightmares, literally, when a new locale can materialise at the twitch of the imagination. But in filmic terms it is a cheat, both illogical and alienating.
The only fun to be derived from all this – if you can call it fun – is to guess who will die next. The young actors themselves are not bad, even if their dialogue is, and Harriet Slater’s (uncredited) dialect coach should be commended. Who knows? one of their number might be looking at a decent future career. After all, Kevin Bacon, Johnny Depp and Tom Hanks all started out in horror films. We have to be positive.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika, Wolfgang Novogratz, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, Olwen Fouéré, Jacob Batalon, Anna Halberg.
Dir Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, Pro Leslie Morgenstein, Scott Glassgold and Elysa Koplovitz Dutton, Screenplay Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, from the novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams, Ph Elie Smolkin, Pro Des Felicity Abbott, Ed Tom Elkins, Music Joseph Bishara, Costumes Ivana Vasic, Sound Steven Ticknor.
Screen Gems/Alloy Entertainment/Ground Control-Sony Pictures.
91 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 3 May 2024. Cert. 15.
