I have, dear reader, seen many dreadful horror movies over the years – from the dregs of found footage to the worst of franchised horror to great ideas flubbed with bad execution. So I think I can say, with some confidence, that Tarot might be the worst to ever do it.
Tarot is a 2024 horror movie (though I use those last two words in the broadest sense imaginable) from debut writer-directors Anna Halburg and Spencer Cohen, adapted from a 1992 novel, which follows a group of hapless teens who get picked off in suitably-esoteric fashion after reading their futures from a cursed tarot deck at the world’s most questionable AirBNB. Which, on paper, sounds like the kind of premise that could be moderately fun, right? Let me make it clear, I wasn’t going into this movie expecting high prestige or sweeping statements about the human condition or anything – in fact, my standards for Tarot were pretty much at the I Know What You Did Last Summer levels, which is to say, low, but enthusiastically ready to be entertained. And friends…
Friends, Tarot doesn’t even clear that bar. It boogies on down right underneath it with an almost impressive lack of effort on virtually every level, and then some. The central group of unfortunate lead actors are working with characters who are little more than wardrobe instructions pinned to a broom, with the central “romance” a particularly egregious nightmare of a non-start; by the time the credits roll and the two leads are walking off-screen beatifically hand-in-hand, the movie has declined to let us know even one thing they apparently like about each other.
Leading woman Harriet Slater is, with almost surgical precision, devoid of any interesting or coherent motivation beyond being able to read tarot cards, while the rest of the friend group seems to do little more than shrug off one of their kin being beaten to death with an actual full-sized ladder as an unfortunate and unavoidable accident. The dialogue is thunderously dreadful, clearly trying to tap in to that post-modern, self-aware wit that ends up coming off more like a slightly-awkward improv group session with six of the least funny people from your after-school acting classes.
Of course, we can’t forget the dense lore that takes up a large chunk of the movie’s runtime, most of which is delivered to us via people crowding around a laptop to read aloud from a plot-relevant website. The actual kills themselves (by far and away the best part of the movie, if only by comparison, even if those villains look like something from a bad YouTube ARG thumbnail) are never meaningfully explained within the mechanics of the plot, but why would you need that, when you could spend at least five full minutes explaining how everyone’s star sign matches up to their personality traits?
Olwen Fouéré (of the recent and equally dreadful Texas Chainsaw Massacre) turns up with her very own plot-relevant website to be scraped like some delicious butter over the dry, cracked visage of this movie, but even the smidge of prestige she brings to proceedings is swiftly undercut when we find out that the very artifact she has dedicated her life to hunting down and destroying has been about a twenty-five minute bus ride away for most of her life. It’s all so badly strung-together, barely clinging on at the barest amount of scrutiny – and trust me when I say I was willing to overlook a lot coming in.
But there’s only so much I can, in good faith, ignore, and Tarot vaults past that and then some. It truly is one of the most spectacularly awful horror movies ever made, and I do not say that lightly. It’s no less than an anti-masterpiece, and for that, it is at least notable – if not memorable, or recommendable, or even acceptable on any meaningful level. If you’ve seen it, I would love for you to jump into the comments to roast it along with me – or, if you happen to like it, to let me know all the reasons I’m wrong!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via The Indian Express)
No But Listen 