This film could have had a real Alice in Wonderland feel to it, huh? Imagine the Queen of Hearts not just screaming, “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” but doing so, like any adult horror film maniac might. Of course, maybe Tarot thought it was doing exactly that in introducing an amorphous villain of witchy origin. Does it matter? Only in that the villain could have been better … but, you know, how important is it to have a decent antagonist in a horror film, anyway?
If you’re like me, you were first introduced to a Tarot deck in Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die. And, like me, you might have said to yourself, “Cool! It’s like a deck of cards only when you’re playing solitaire, they tell a story. Unlike normal solitaire, that story is, “you’re a loser.” Wait. No. I suppose that is just like regular solitaire. So maybe Tarot is only different in that it’s hard to figure out what’s trump?
“Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.” Steven Wright
A bunch of college kids have rented a creepy old house in the Catskills. Like ya do. In movies, the group of random college friends is either 1) out for trouble or 2) going to get in trouble regardless of motivation. This group is a little of both. None of the seven seem particularly interested in sex, despite being college students on film. OK, small point for avoiding cliché, BUT the septet is willing to break a padlocked room in order to explore liquor options. Giant eyeroll.
What they find isn’t liquor, but the artifact basement from Cabin in the Woods. Dudes, you’re sunk already. I’m sure everything in this nightmare museum is a trap. So after poring over the choice selection of evil artifacts, this knockoff Scooby gang settles on a wooden box with antique hand-painted Tarot cards.
Geez, kids, wouldn’t you all just rather be, I dunno, having sex or something? No? OK. But your fortunes are gonna be: “Wasted a big opportunity.”
The movie eventually reveals that the cursed deck is a product of 18th Century Hungary … so why the cards are captioned in English is really beyond explanation. Never mind. The “seer” of the group, Haley (Harriet Slater), decides to read everybody’s fortune, pointing out the card use in tandem with zodiac signs, so sure, as long as we’re divining from one mythical source of information, why not add another? I bet you could add palm reading and phrenology for a grand slam of mystical bullshit soothsaying.
Doesn’t matter.
Point is, after the fortunes are read … and thank goodness the movie referred to them again a few times, cuz God help the person who can keep these characters apart … after the reading, one of the septet gets killed off in exactly the way her fortune read, and the perpetrator seemed
to be the living version of the fortune card itself. Oooooooooo. Spooooooooky.
Granted, it hits a little harder than a pack of cards coming to life and the lower ranks painting all the white roses red. But Lewis Carroll wasn’t intending to write horror, now, was he? So, how does one stop the malevolent magnifications of a pack of cards?
And why are the cards evil, anyway? Yeah, yeah, I know their backstory. But they’d had some time to think it over, haven’t they? Don’t toys just want to be played with? At this rate, nobody is gonna play with you again, Missy. You can be sure of that. And “getting killed by cards” is really only meant to be metaphorical, y’know?
Tarot, like Ouija, is not the worst idea for a movie … also like Ouija, it’s ofar from the best. There are one or two scares here, a bit of blood, and I did like how close the manifestations resembled the cards themselves. Somebody in the art department had fun with that. But none of this material will prove satisfying for horror fans, croupiers, mediums, extra-larges or anybody else who might be taken with an evil pack of cards.
There once was an ill-gotten deck
An evil unleashed at low tech
The wrath became strong
And then turned all wrong
For the censor sent all victims to Heck
Rated PG-13, 92 Minutes
Director: Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg
Writer: Nicholas Adams, Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg
Genre: Card games
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The Queen of Cups, maybe?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Horror fans awaiting a genuine villain
