Tarot

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).

This movie is just ok and its another movie about college kids dying in strange ways. It is pretty predictable movie plot and especially after the girl does the tarot reading you basically know what is going to happen to each of them.

It has a few jump scares and the tarot card lady is creepy looking and over all product value wasn't too bad.

Jacob Batalon provides a few laughs but a lot of laughs do not land and are pretty cringed but then again I think that how his character was written.

Most of the college kids are throw away character and don't really get much back story on them.

Pacing is good and has a tried a true run time of hour and half which works well for most horror movies.

I would recommend this movie if you like horror movies.

Firstly these guys didn't even seem like the same age group. Performances aren't great. What doesn't help is that the movie just starts, we don't really get to learn much about the characters other than it's one of them's birthday. They're not charismatic enough to pull that off and get you invested.

Tarot is literally the title, so I guess it's not a spoiler to say there's tarot reading early on, so I thought maybe the scary stuff starts early on too. It's also pretty cliche, like of course a cabin in a woods and old gothic tarot cards isn't a good mix. And it's addressed several times along with anything else creepy. You can clearly tell when the characters is making the wrong decisions that lead into the horror elements. Reminded me of "talk to me" but that movie was better.

The readings felt like spoilers. But the readings were all told in 5minutes and I could barely remember the specifics, and I guess the writers knew that because the movie addresses it with creepy voice overs.

I liked some scenes like the lady with the lamp and the clown. The deaths sucked though, plus the movie shied away from actually showing them, just a splurge of blood. We only het to see the before and after, not he actual during.

The movies not great but I don't outright hate it, probably because I was prepared to it not to be great. I'd recommend you should go watch "talk to me" or "cabin in the woods instead."

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.

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.