TAROT (2024)

Here is the decision, and it's a short one. TAROT builds its whole story on the very things Scripture condemns — astrology, divination, and cursed Tarot cards — and it never gets out from under that foundation. The students do try to fight the curse, and there's a flicker of moral courage in how they risk their lives for one another. But in the end they defeat the evil by using the very deck that cursed them. The occult isn't the problem here; it's the solution.

Add extreme, bloody violence and a steady stream of obscenities and profanities, and you have a movie the source calls excessive and unacceptable.

Jacob Batalon earns a few laughs as the group's nerdy member, and there are one or two fun character touches. That's not enough. Our answer is simple: skip this one.

Seven college friends rent a mansion in the Catskills for a birthday weekend. When the mood turns awkward on their last night, Haley — an amateur astrologer — tries to lighten things by reading everyone's horoscope with a strange deck of Tarot cards they found in the basement.

Each friend draws a different card: The Magician, The Fool, the Devil. Back at campus the next night, supernatural versions of those cards begin stalking the students, one by one. A Tarot expert warns them the deck is cursed — and that destroying it is easier said than done.

Two stars, and here's what they mean: this is a competent but forgettable horror movie. The source calls it a rather pedestrian occult horror flick, and the phrase fits. The premise has a hook, and the design of the Tarot-based killers gives the film a look, but the storytelling never rises above genre routine.

The bright spot is the cast. Jacob Batalon, familiar from the recent SPIDER-MAN movies, delivers an endearing comic turn as the group's nerdy member, and there are a few fun character flourishes scattered throughout. Those moments aside, TAROT is mediocre — a movie that does the minimum and little more.

TAROT is soaked in the occult, and it never wrings itself dry. The whole engine of the plot is astrology and divination — a young woman reading fortunes with a cursed Tarot deck, and supernatural forces punishing everyone who touched the cards. The movie promotes these practices even as it dramatizes their danger.

There is some mitigation, and it's worth naming honestly. The film shows the peril of fooling around with astrology and Tarot cards. The students fight back against the curse, and they risk their own lives to save their surviving friends. That's a real moral thread. But it's a thin one, because the story's resolution undoes it: in the end, the characters defeat the malevolent spirit only by using the cursed Tarot cards themselves. Evil is fought with evil, and the deck is vindicated rather than repudiated.

Scripture is not ambiguous here. God condemns astrology and divination outright — "There shall not be found among you anyone who... practices divination or tells fortunes" (Deuteronomy 18:10). The film treats the Tarot deck as a tool to be mastered; the Bible treats it as a door to be shut. That gap is the whole reason this review lands where it does.

TAROT has a couple of fun performances and a workable hook, but it's a mediocre horror movie built entirely on the occult — one that ultimately treats a cursed Tarot deck as the hero's best weapon. Add extreme violence and a torrent of foul language, and the verdict writes itself: skip it. Looking for something to watch instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.