Skip to main content

Horoscopes and Horror Tropes

 


Catching a film like Tarot in the cinema in 2024 is weird. It feels like one of those horror films that just sort of appear on a streaming service. One you find deep in bowels of Amazon Prime, take a chance on and are pleasantly surprised to find is more or less fine. Up on the big screen it's still fine but its shortcomings are made very apparent.

To its credit the film wastes no time in getting to the point. It begins with seven friends in a mansion they rented for one of their birthdays and within the first ten minutes main character Haley has read the group their fortunes from a cursed deck of tarot cards they find in the basement. Once they return home the friends begin to be picked off one by one courtesy of a ghost/monster taking the shape of whichever card was drawn in their reading. Exactly how they kill them is a bit muddled, at first it seems they are scaring their victims into "Final Destination" ing themselves but at other times they become more hands (or saws) on.

This lack of clarity runs throughout the film. Tarot cards are great for ominous sounding names and creepy pictures but beyond that the film makers seem far more interested in zodiac signs so invent a weird mythology where the combination of tarot and horoscope is some sort of super magic. This way they don't have to waste time with character build up and can just assign each character their star sign as personality. Thumbs up for efficiency but it doesn't exactly have you routing for the casts survival, especially with the inane filler dialogue they spout anytime they aren't filling the audience in on exactly what is happening. In fact it's downright disappointing anytime one of them doesn't die. The one exception being Paxton, purely because he is played by Jacob Balton  (Ned in the MCU Spiderman films) and his inherent likability has you wanting him to stick around.

Looking forward to characters dying isn't necessarily an issue for a horror film but there aren't enough kills, and they aren't inventive enough to be enjoyable. Tarot is entry level horror so nothing too scary occurs and there isn't any gore, not a problem in itself but when you have a whole deck of cards to inspire the kills someone running in front of a train doesn't really cut it. The feeling of being underwhelmed is reinforced by an air of cheapness. Apart from a brief chat with a cop the seven characters are completely alone, wandering empty streets and corridors. This could be a stylistic choice but combined with the terminally dull lighting it feels like a budget squeeze.

The good things to say about Tarot are that it's competently made and at close to ninety minutes dead on it doesn't take up too much of your time. Compared to some other bargain bin horror out their that's close to a recommendation but it feels made for TV, not the big screen.

5 "this decks kinda strange"s out of 10. 

 


 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Uncomfortably (Ve)Numb

Despite his somehow enduring popularity, Venom is a conceptually rubbish character. He is born of a period in comics when publishers wanted to make their child friendly characters edgy and Spiderman media, be it comics, films, games or whatever else, tends to get worse whenever he shows up. "Kind of like the good guy but bad" is one of the most boring villain types to begin with and no writer has ever come up with anything interesting enough to make him deserve his top billing amongst the wall crawlers stacked rogues gallery. The previous two films managed to (somewhat) sidestep the blandness of the IP by hiring a great actor in Tom Hardy and letting him do Jim Carrey style physical comedy mixed with a heart felt love story between a man and his super powered alien parasite. Given it is the last in last in the trilogy, Venom : The Last Dance really wants to have epic stakes and emotional resonance, leaving little room for the things that made the first two movies watchable. ...

The Pope Was Dead to Begin With

  Conclave opens with Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) arriving at The Vatican following the death of the incumbent Pope. It then falls to him to arrange and administer a papal conclave, summoning the world's cardinals to convene in seclusion and vote on who should become the next Holy Father.  The principle runners are Stanley Tucci's Aldo Bellini, who wants to continue the previous Pope's liberal approach to modernising the church, Firebrand traditionalist Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castlellitto), conservative contender to be the first African Pope Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) and John Lithgow as popular but potentially dodgy Canadian Joseph Tremblay. There is also some intrigue surrounding the arrival of the Archbishop of Kabul, who claims to have been raised to the position in secret by the previous Pope. Shifting alliances and schemes play out as the contenders politic for the top job. Everything on display in Conclave is as tights and pristine as it gets...

Wicked, Wicked..Jungle is Massive

The Wicked musical has grossed a piddly $6 billion since its opening in 2003 so Universal Studios have decided to raise some extra cash with this film adaptation. Well, this and next years next years adaptation since despite no "part 1" in the title we only get half the story here. Duplicitous marketing aside, splitting proceedings in half seems to have been the savvy move. For the uninitiated, Wicked is the story of The Wicked Witch of the West, giving her a backstory and  retelling The Wizard of Oz from her point of view. Here, she is called Elphaba and this first film tells the story of her time at Shiz University, her frosty then friendly relationship with future good witch Glinda and encounter with The Wizard that leads to her being branded a villain. Despite only covering half the material this film is longer than the entire musical but it seems like that couldn't be helped. Movie audiences aren't accustomed to songs driving the plot so connective tissue has to ...

Sex, Dancing and Rubles

 Anora sees writer/director Sean Baker continue his quest to shine a light on the marginalised and in particular, sex workers. It also might be the biggest triumph of his unique blend of realism, playfulness and insight so far.  Mikey Madison plays Anora, or as she prefers to be called Ani, an exotic dancer and escort who is asked to look after 21 year old oligarch's son Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) on account of her being able to understand his native Russian. After charming him, she is hired to be his girlfriend for a week which leads to the pair marrying. A win win situation that allows Ivan to obtain a green card, and give the middle finger to his controlling parents, and gives Ani access to a lifestyle she could only have dreamt of weeks before. There is no honeymoon period however, as Ivan's antics make the Russian news and his parents send his godfather and a couple of goons round to "convince" the pair the marriage should be annulled. When a film opens with toples...

Hugh You Gonna Call

 Heretic opens with two young Mormon missionaries talking about penises on a park bench. The light hearted opening is in stark contrast to the tension to come and serves as a fun introduction to two endearing characters. Sister Paxton (Chloe East) has been born and raised in the church, eager and enthusiastic she is desperate to land her first conversion. Sophie Thatcher's Sister Barnes is more experienced and more comfortable in the world at large. We spend some time getting to know them as they make their rounds, hearing about their hopes for a handsome husband and sadness at the way they shunned and considered "weird" by their peers. We are thoroughly on board with them by the time they encounter Hugh Grant's seemingly gregarious Mr Reed. He appears interested in their beliefs and impresses the girls with his religious knowledge but the conversation becomes more testy and they realise they can't leave Reed's house without playing his game. To say Hugh Gran...