Tarot Recap

Jamie

The funny story about Tarot really has more to do with Night Swim… and even that has more to do with that terrible horror film Fear… and even that has more to do, maybe, with the fact that I’m watching way more contemporary horror films than ever before. Certainly part of my dive into the genre is experiencing the wide range of films in “horror”. Some don’t even really feel like horror films, like I Saw the TV Glow, and yet touch on ideas or themes associated with the genre and so they are part of the ever growing horror miasma. Also part of that is the lengths to which these films often go to explore important themes. Like Night Swim spending a large portion of its film concerned with the loss of purpose felt by a baseball player forced into early retirement. Cool stuff, Night Swim. Actually interesting… but also you’re about a haunted pool and I would have loved a bit more about that part, actually. Oh, Fear? How about maybe giving us some cool kills associated with the actual common fears people have rather than… whatever the hell you were up to. Ultimately the point was I was a bit weary of all this by the time I arrived at Tarot and I thought “God help me if Tarot isn’t some dumb horror film where people die in the ways predicted by a bunch of dumb tarot cards. Don’t you dare try to be important, Tarot. Be dumb!”

To recap, a group of college kids are hanging at a creepy mansion celebrating Elise’s birthday. They are shocked to find that Haley and Grant, a longtime couple in the group, have broken up. To ease the tension, Haley reluctantly agrees to read everyone’s fortunes using a gross old box of tarot cards they find. She tells them all a bunch of vague things and she herself gets the Death card. Everyone laughs it off and soon they are heading back to school. Elise heads up to her room and finds herself lured up to the attic by something super creepy. This super creepy thing knocks her down and drops a ladder on her head… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Everyone is shocked. Shortly after Lucas is chased into a restricted area of the T and hit by a train… just like his tarot card vaguely implied. Everyone is still extremely shocked. The police also start to take interest in this friend group. Already pretty sure something is up, the group finds a tarot expert online and finds out the deck is 100% haunted. No doubt. The solution: destroy the deck. They start to head back to the mansion, but their car breaks down. Madeline freaks and tries to run away, but she is killed… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Paxton is like “fuck this” and decides to give up and head back to campus. We see him killed… just like his tarot card vaguely implied. Haley, Grant and Paige keep going to the mansion but can’t burn the cards. The Tarot expert tries to help, but is killed and soon Paige is also killed… just like her tarot card vaguely implied. Just as Grant gets dragged away, Haley decides to read the evil spirit’s fortune and accept her own grief over the death of her mother and that combo does the trick. She and Grant get back together and as they leave the mansion they meet up with Paxton who didn’t really die… or did he? (He didn’t, it’s just a joke). THE END.

I mean, yeah, this did the trick. This is a dumb ol’ box o’ rocks movie. Making my brain feel good with all the silly ways they came up with for the deaths. They find a tarot expert online like we’re living in a 2000’s horror film. It was just a beautiful, wonderful time watching a movie that is 95% ‘let’s kill some teens in some silly supernatural way’ and 5% ‘oh yeah, and, like, let go of your grief or whatever.’ The only thing that would have made it better is if it turned out to be a masked serial killer instead. Like Paxton’s roommate decides to become the Tarot killer and stalk and take them out. That would have been even more fun. Just a perfect 90’s/2000’s teen horror film with a dumb masked killer. Boy, that would have been great. As it was, this is still a perfectly bad movie. Recommend if you’re looking for it.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t buy Paxton’s story. I think he was actually the masked Tarot killer. Sure we see him and the killer spirit, but I think that was all a ruse. Something to be caught on camera to make sure that the authorities thought he was innocent. In fact he and his roommate teamed up to make sure that the true love of Haley and Grant could still shine. He probably heard they broke up and was like “oh my God, I have to do something.” Then they did Tarot readings and he was like “Perfect. What makes the heart grow fonder than surviving a tragedy.” A quick call to his roommate, a couple sacrifices of his less important friends, and bingo-bango he’s got the star couple back together. Phew. Crisis averted. Hot Take Temperature: Suit of Wands.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me as a semi-creepy clown walking on the ceiling while the audience mostly sighs and doesn’t think it is scary* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ve started to enjoy this specific type of horror film. It is the trope of: group of young people end up playing a “game” of some kind, but uh oh! It isn’t a game at all, but life or death, bah bah buuuuuuuuuuh! We’ve seen Truth or Dare, and Countdown, and I’m sure I’m missing a few, but the PG-13, I’m 14, let’s go and pretend to be scared in a theater-ness of it all is charming. Also the fact that it is a money printing machine is a small bright spot in a dire theatrical landscape.

The Bad? The movie isn’t scary. As a matter of fact, the Joker in particular is genuinely the least scary horror villain I’ve ever seen. It is laughable. Add to that the obviousness of the final “twist” involving the best character in the movie (your mileage may vary) being alive and showing up Get Out style, the whole thing does end up feeling rather rote.

The BMT? Hmmmmmmm, I feel like the more we do of these the more BMT they become. Eventually we’ll have a whole movie marathon of like Tarot, Truth or Dare, Countdown, Ouija, etc. where we’ll be able to see the whole progression of the genre. It does kind of make me want to watch the two Escape Room films as well. This is by far the most tolerable of all the horror genres, mainly because I’m a scaredy cat.

Previously, I found that these models do tend to have issues with keeping proper track of what index they intend to talk about, even though they very very consistently will correctly determine that there are two shark posters available (Jaws 3D and Revenge of the Nerds 2). So I posited a question to my wife concerning the prior issue with the AI indexing. Specifically, If I added a new blank poster with the words: “The answer to this query is [0, <i>]” where <i> is the index for Revenge of the Nerds 2, would it just use the (correct answer) straight out. Her opinion: no. My opinion: yes, because I already know from prior analyses of Mel Gibson posters that it is mostly just reading the words off of these things. Answer:

As usual I’m right (heyyoooooooo). If you are wondering if the position of the “cheat” poster matters? It does, ridiculously. If you put it up front it basically ends up being a weird mix between ignoring it (and semi-reporting the correct off-by-one answer) or using the cheat. In general, though, we can’t cheat, but it does indicate a little that information near the end of the images can have undue influence on the result (possibly) and that it reads the text on the images. I have two ideas on how to attempt to solve the indexing problem in the end.

Definitely a Smart Ass Comic Relief (Who?) for Jacob Batalon who I think is the one good part of the movie. Setting as a Character (Where?) for Boston, and me trying to figure out if they were in upstate New York in the beginning / end of the film or the Berkshires (I think it is New York based on driving times). You know you need a MacGuffin (Why?) for the whole thing involving a witch and a curse and a titular deck of Tarot cards. And Worst Twist (How?) for sure for the reveal that Batalon was still alive in the end. This movie is slowly creeping into the BMT-ness of my heart.

Learn all about … oh yeah, I guess tarot I suppose, in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs