Turns out JimmyZ watched this in August 2024. so now we’ve got 2 reviews for it. oops. If you want to read his review too, it’s HERE.

I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this movie going into it. I wanted to watch a serious horror movie. In many ways this didn’t disappoint, and in many others it did.

Tarot, is an American horror film released in 2024 directed by Spencer Cohen and Anna Halberg, starring Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, and Jacob Batalon. Not to be confused with the other 2024 horror film Tarot, which is a South Korean anthology movie. Kinda weird that there were 2 movies of the same name & genre in the same year right?

This movie started with a group of 7 college kids around a campfire that rented out a mansion in the woods to celebrate a birthday. After realizing they were out of beer and deciding it’s too late to go into town to buy some, as well as being too far in the middle of nowhere to get it DoorDashed to them, they make the brilliant decision to search the residence they’re in, in an attempt to steal the homeowner’s liquor. When faced with a padlocked door with a “Private keep out” sign on it they broke the padlock and went in, discovering a basement full of old occult items one of which is an old hand painted tarot deck in a wooden box with an astrology circle & pentagram carved atop it. One of the group members being very into the zodiac and tarot readings gave everyone (including herself) a tarot reading before they all went off to bed.

The next day everyone packed up into their vehicles and returned to campus non-the-wiser of the hell they had just unleashed upon themselves. Up until this point, which is about 15 minutes in, the film felt rather campy to me. Don’t get me wrong, campy can be good when done right but it just felt off, plus as I mentioned at the start of this I wanted to watch a serious horror film not a campy one. Much to my surprise and delight from here on the film wasn’t campy in the slightest. Seeing how they brought the tarot readings to life was cool, but boy was it frustrating watching people be told exactly what to do to survive and ignore it, or hide in closets and block doors to attempt to get away from this supernatural entity that had no issue following them into the city or killing their car was infuriating. Though it didn’t feel like bad writing, for the most part it felt like exactly what most people would do in a situation like that, panic, ignore voices of reason, and rely on your own survival instincts.

The middle of this film is really good. it’s just the first and last 15 minutes or so that I didn’t like/loathed. It’s hard to even give this 6 stars with how much I didn’t like the ending but thinking about the movie as a whole I think most of the film does a lot of work bringing it up to that mark. If you don’t mind spoilers, check the next paragraph to see what I didn’t like about the end. Before writing that last paragraph I had landed on 6 stars (as you can see with the struck through text). Now I’ve changed my mind and am giving it a tentative, low 5, teetering on 4.

Welcome to spoiler corner, where do I begin… First of all, the ghost/soul bound to the cards yoinked Grant (Adain Bradley) through a glass window on the second floor of a mansion and he showed back up very quickly armed with a fire-poker and not a scratch on him, there’s no reason I can think of that this ghost wouldn’t have made sure he was dead before moving on to Haley (Harriet Slater). Just before Grant was pulled through a window, he and Haley determined they should be able to end the curse by doing a tarot reading on the soul that bound the cards, which as a solution I mostly liked. While running from her death Haley is at one point pinned up against a wall, this is where a freshly defenestrated Grant shows up without a scratch and wielding a fire poker to strike and once again gain the ire of their ghost. Haley gets to the tarot cards while Grant appears to be being literally dragged to hell, but no worries the moment she starts reading the cards Grant is spared again so that the ghost can try to intimidate (she just kind of holds Haley aloft growling while Haley finishes giving the reading). Because the card pulled for the ghost is death, at the end of the reading she vaporizes in a mini tornado and the tarot cards burn up. I personally feel like she should’ve killed them first before moving on to kill herself instead of just ceasing to be. As our surviving duo is walking back to town we’re met with a surprise, Paxton (Jacob Batalon) survived his fate, not because he did anything that should’ve gotten him out of it, but because is fucking roommate hit the elevator button and the spirit that breaks cars, locks up the elevator, can manipulate just about anything they want however they want is wholly thwarted by this. The elevator door opens and his roommate finds Paxton on the ground screaming. At a bare minimum Paxton and Grant should be 100% dead no question about it. Because the spirit should’ve killed Grant the first time around, Haley should be dead too as noone should’ve been there to save her when she was caught before getting to the cards, or maybe Haley would’ve made it to the cards to do the reading instead of being pinned up against the wall had the damn spirit actually killed Grant.