La profezia del male

Tarot is a very predictable, silly and cliche ridden horror film. The dialogue is screamingly ridiculous and the characters are more cardboard than the cards themselves. This film has very few, if any, redeeming features and as the well trodden story unfolds (complete with absurd, lazy and unsubtle back story), it's very hard to stay awake. The writing and direction are laughable and the actors are clearly stifled by a terrible script. But the deeply annoying, often completely inappropriate music that drones on throughout ensures that a second viewing is definitely not on the cards! Not recommended.

This is a really good example of why so many people don't like horror.

A group of pretty teens unwittingly get themselves caught up in some supernatural shenanigans and become canon fodder for some demonic entity.

There's a raft of jump scares (though I use to word 'scare' lightly) and each of those is accompanied by jarring sound effects almost as if the director doesn't trust that he can even make you jump. There's a bit of middle of the road CGI and a personal bug bear of mine, an accessible expert on hand who can explain in great detail exactly what is going on. Then dies.

It's just a really shallow, cursed object, jump scare marathon with cliche characters and annoying exposition and there are loads of movies just like this.

Tarot is the latest teen horror to hit the big screen, but the film is completely undeserving of a cinematic release.

I could tell from the trailer that the film wouldn't be great, but I was unprepared for just how bad it actually was. It feels a lot like something from well over twenty years ago: the 'teenagers unable to escape fate' story line is highly reminiscent of Final Destination while its variety of creepy killers reminded me of Thir13en Ghosts - only it isn't anywhere near as good as either of those films.

Directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg take the easy route by delivering predictable jump scares accompanied by very loud noises, and it soon gets very tiresome and repetitive. Unlike Final Destination and Thir13en Ghosts, Tarot doesn't even provide viewers with gory death scenes - all of the kills are extremely tame and most are off screen. The teal and orange colour scheme adds to the dated feel, and there is an over-reliance on CGI.

A more unoriginal and forgettable horror movie it is hard to imagine - this is a serious contender for worst horror release of the year so far (and that's saying something).

I don't pretend to be clever enough to fully understand AI, but I believe creation by AI involves a trawl though the interweb to find out what's been successful before, and to fuse these elements into a narrative framework - also based on what's worked in the past.

In other words, string a load of cliches together and hope for the best. I'm not saying this film was written (and directed) by AI, but it might just as well have been.

And here we are. Group of kids (yup) creepy house (yup) strange artifact (yup) Are you sure this is a good idea? (yup) oh dear, we've been cursed (yup) death is stalking us all (yup) let's split up (yup) gruesome deaths (yup) elderly sage who knows the back-story (yup) the only way to survive is to do this (yup) enough twists to make it interesting...

Well no. On the last point we get a resounding nope. This is dreary, predictable, formulaic and dull. Not even the jump-scares work. None of the cast are talented enough to make a bland script sound good; everyone else involved was either out of their depth or on autopilot.

A group of twenty-somethings have rented a "literal" mansion (I wish writers would find out what that word means and use it properly!) and are having a few fireside beers outside it whilst subjecting us to their dull relationship issues. Needless to say the gang are a politically correct assemblage that tick just about every box and are frankly all pretty well deserving of what's to come. On that front, the clue's in the title. Exploring the house looking to top up their supply of booze, they find a locked room full of all things occult and that includes an unique set of tarot cards. Rather foolishly, but typically disparagingly, they demand that "Haley" (Harriet Slater) read their fortunes. Next thing they are dropping like flies - all in a manner they gradually realise is akin to the results of the tarot reading. As they gruesomely dwindle, they realise that they are going to need some help and so thanks to Google spook, they find a woman (Olwen Fouéré) who informs them of the bleak history of their toxic tarot and tells them that the cards' destruction might be their only road to salvation. Thing is, can they survive long enough to get back to the house? There's nothing at all original here, sorry. We've seen it loads of times before and the uninteresting dynamic between the characters is even more predictable than the denouement. To be fair, the candle-lit visual effects are quite effective at times, but the acting is pretty dreadful and the whole frat-like presentation left me looking at the clock after half an hour. It's a shame. The whole astrology and mythology surrounding the tarot could have offered us a rich vein to tap into and exploit, but here we simply get a rather lazy and formulaic light-horror enterprise that's really devoid of much imagination. Literally.