Major Arcana, Major Problems
Directed by Spenser Cohen and Ana Halberg
Starring Harriet Slater, Avantika Vandanapu, Jacob Batalon
Released May 3rd, 2024
Rated PG-13
A small group of friends have rented out a mansion to celebrate the birthday of their pal Elise (Larsen Thompson). How much did it cost them to rent a mansion in the Catskills? Did they pool their money to do this? Honestly, it looks like a pretty lame party. Did they bring any food besides birthday cake? The friends are shown to have quickly gone through all of the alcohol they brought to the mansion, though none of them seem the least bit drunk. Breaking through a locked basement door in a quest to find more alcohol, the gang stumbles upon a collection of occult items, including a box containing an old deck of tarot cards.
One of the group, Haley (Harriet Slater), just so happens to love tarot cards but evidently has never mentioned this to her pals. She decides to give readings to everyone, their quest for beer sidetracked by the promise of some yuks. Haley’s friends know so little about tarot cards that one of them, Paxton (Jacob Batalon), pronounces a hard T at the end of the word. He is quickly corrected, lest the audience get confused. Haley’s pals don’t even seem to know their own star sign, which is pretty unbelievable. Even if you wholly discount astrology, you know if you’re a Capricorn or a Pisces.
Haley’s readings go over well with the group, since they don’t yet know that the deck was created and subsequently cursed many long years ago by a woman known as The Astrologer (Suncica Milanovic). The Astrologer is able to bring the characters on her cards to life and kill those who would dare to shuffle the deck. While The Astrologer has a tragic backstory, I don’t think that excuses her behavior of murdering anyone who uses her special deck of cards. She seems misguided. Maybe she needs her cards read to her.
Tarot is based on Horrorscope, a 1992 young adult novel credited to Nicholas Adams but actually written by John Peel, as Adams was a pen named used by several authors in the 1990s. In that book, high school students become victims of a killer who uses their school newspaper’s horoscopes as the basis for elaborate murders. That’s probably why there is so much emphasis on astrology in the film. Could one make a horror film based on actual tarot readings? Possibly, but this movie doesn’t even try. The readings are nonsensical, nothing more than a random set of words to set up a few lackluster supernatural murders.
To carry out these supernatural murders, The Astrologer takes the form of The High Priestess, The Hermit, The Hanged Man, The Fool, The Magician, The Devil, and Death, all corresponding to cards that the gang received in their tarot readings. It’s a neat idea, wasted by a lack of imagination. Each death is shrouded in darkness, the entities only visible as they jump out of the black to shock the viewer. There are numerous short horror films on YouTube that inevitably end with a cat in the cupboard moment. Tarot is like a feature-length version of this. The entity designs are interesting, but we don’t see enough of them. Wouldn’t a long, drawn-out stalking scene be a nice change of pace from endless jump scares?
The Magician’s scenes are the only section that allows itself to have fun with the movie’s central concept, and as a result is the highlight of an otherwise terrible film. The victim is Paige (Avantika Vandanapu), who finds herself in a trunk, about to be sawed in half. We know The Astrologer has taken the form of the Magician, but the interesting thing is he is performing his Vegas-style act in front of an appreciative crowd of ghouls. Who are these ghostly attendees of the Magician’s show? Are they poltergeists out for a night on the town? I enjoyed kicking around the idea that they were spirits passing through, excited to see some entertainment.
Horror veteran Joseph Bishara’s score is another highlight of the film, never overpowering the proceedings, and providing enough creepiness throughout. Unfortunately, there are no real scares to be found in Tarot. Everything is telegraphed so far in advance, it’s impossible to be startled. The cursed deck’s backstory doesn’t add anything except more questions, and the numerous bloodless deaths are treated without humor or horror, just something mundane to cross off of a to-do list.
The evil entities that spring from the cards in the film are based on designs by Trevor Henderson, known to fans of creepypasta as the creator of the monster Sirenhead. The cards themselves look pretty cool. It would be neat if the movie studio decided to manufacture and release a few decks as promotion for the film. Though they did not produce a full deck, Searchlight Pictures distributed promotional copies of some of the tarot cards featured in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. If you want to learn about tarot cards, I recommend looking up Liz Dean, Julia Gordon-Bramer, and Brigit Esselmont. If you want to see a daft horror film that mentions a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo without making a lick of sense, then look no further than Tarot.