Tarot: Tödliche Prophezeiung

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.

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."

Just a typical teen horror film that follows the same bad formula that's getting stale and old. A group of college friends are together, play a game of reading from a mysterious and forbidden tarot deck... they're then cursed and picked off one by one in cheesy death scenes.

The movie is full of bad dialogue, corny humor, stupid characters that make idiotic decisions, cheesy jump scares, and a boring story full of cliche twists. Everything is so predictable that I called most of the deaths and the ending was extremely bad.

This is just another example of a studio tossing money at a bad idea knowing it'll still make some profit. I do not recommend wasting your money on this movie.

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.