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A group of college students are violently killed one-by-one after a fateful tarot reading in the frightfully unimaginative Tarot, which opens in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. Following in the well-worn footsteps of tepid horror films like Ouija, Truth or Dare, and Wish Upon, this one is painfully obvious from the word go, but never gets silly enough to provide any bad-movie fun.

Last year’s monkey paw chiller Talk to Me suggested brighter things on the horizon for this type of horror movie, but Tarot dials things back to the same narrative these things have been following for decades: group of college students plays around with supernatural object they don’t understand, and quickly comes to regret it. This very specific sub-genre’s roots lie in early 2000s successes like The Ring and Final Destination.

Tarot opens with a group of largely interchangeable Boston-area college students played by Harriet Slater, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, Avantika, Wolfgang Novogratz, Adain Bradley, and Jacob Batalon (Spider-Man: No Way Home) during a weekend retreat at an isolated manor in the Catskills (played by locations in Belgrade, Serbia). Desperate and out of booze, they search the weekend rental for a hidden stash but only turn up a box of creepy hand-illustrated tarot cards.

No alcohol? Sure, some tarot readings from this musty old deck will liven up the party. But when those readings start coming true over the following days, things start to take a dark turn. Waitaminute… surely all of these characters didn’t get a reading implying imminent violent death? No, they did not. But they did draw a creepy central card that comes to life to murder them in ways hinted at by the literal language of their reading.

In past films of this type, the characters would have to visit a library and scan microfiche to uncover the true horror behind the curse that stalks them. But in Tarot, that kind of thing is just a Google search away. In fact, there have been multiple cases of young adults mysteriously dying after tarot readings, though our protagonists have to pay a midnight visit to a tarot expert with pinboard walls (Mandy‘s Olwen Fouéré) to get the full story. It involves a royal astrologer in old Hungary, an ancient curse, and an expedient five minutes of climactic exposition.

The saving grace keeping Tarot from the bottom of this horror barrel is the novelty of the tarot cards themselves, which are nicely illustrated and lead to some briefly appealing creatures. Despite working with a script that couldn’t have inspired much confidence, the effects team, at least, gives this movie more effort than it deserves.

There’s precisely one engaging death scene here, a magician-inspired sequence that features a character hiding in a box… no prizes for guessing what happens. While the setting is transposed from what should be 17th century Hungary to 1920s vaudeville, the vibrant makeup effects used to set the scene evoke some Insidious-like goofball hellscape vibes, and provide a taste of the kind of horror stylings the rest of the film could have desperately used.

Tarot is based on the 1992 YA novel Horrorscope, written by the pseudonymous Nicholas Adams, which focused on daily hororscopes rather than tarot cards. It was directed by Spenser Cohen (co-writer on The Expendables 4 and Moonfall) and Anna Halberg, who previously collaborated on the fictional horror podcast Classified. But the end result leaves you feeling as if an algorithm is the true brainchild behind the story; this PG-13 movie about a group of college students who play around with a cursed deck of tarot cards certainly won’t surprise anyone who has the poor fortune of stumbling upon it.

No it is not a regular fan fiction. In fact, it is not a fan fiction at all. For me, it is why sadistic people around us hate happy women. When you hit rock bottom emotionally, you will find people loving you and caring for you. But when you are happy and at the high in your life, then people start having problems.

Anne Hathaway’s
The Idea of You
teaches you when you hit rock bottom, you have nowhere to go, but up. That’s exactly what happened to Solène (Anne Hathaway), a recently divorced woman just about to hit 40. She unknowingly lands up in a relationship with a British boy band sensation Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine).

Solène is in a dilemma because Campbell is way younger to her and on top of that he is the heart throb of many young girls. And he is hugely rich and famous too. It is just that Solène (Anne Hathaway) didn’t know who he was. Solène is a stylish woman who was initially unimpressed by his celebrity status. The Idea of You is a fresh take on the popular rom-com-drama formula

The initial part of the film deals with how she has still not come to terms with her sudden divorce and how she was the last one to know that her husband was cheating with her. She got married young and had a baby was very early on life and while she was struggling with motherhood and setting up her art gallery, the husband was having an affair with a lawyer from his firm. The wound of her husband cheating on her is still raw and she is still dealing with it. Burdened with responsibilities of motherhood and loneliness, she really doesn’t know what she wants from life.

Even when Solène (Anne Hathaway) meets Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) she is totally confused. Campbell is in his twenties and madly in love with her. She feels that the relationship with a young man just doesn’t fit in her life and on top of that she has got a young girl. But she can’t stop herself from meeting him and being loved by him. Yet at the back of her mind there is always that feeling of guilt and things get worse when the intimate images of her and Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) got leaked on the internet. She gets slut-shamed by Campbell’s fans.

The Idea of You is a feel good film and most importantly it is always refreshing to see good looking actors on screen. And with Anne Hathaway flashing her million-dollar dolphin smile every now and then, you definitely can’t take your eyes off her. The place where both Solène (Anne Hathaway) and Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) are in an intense kissing scene and she, a single mother of a teenage daughter, stops herself from getting more intimate by saying, “I could be your mother.” And to this Hayes quickly says, “But you are not.” So, that’s the whole dilemma of Solène.

There is something very pure and beautiful in the way the love between the two are shown. Never for once, will you feel the relationship to be dirty. The simple love and attraction between the two is shown in such a beautiful way makes it a great weekend watch. The music, the styling, and the outfits are great. The story is simple and pure fluff, so just enjoy it!

Rating: 3 out of 5