I didn’t expect a lot out of this movie when I saw it advertised. It seemed to be a fairly straightforward horror movie, with a group of young people doing something dangerous and foolish. In this instance, dangerous and foolish is taking an unknown set of Tarot cards and using them, plus astrology, to read their fortunes. And the person in the group who has experience with Tarot cards warns them against using another person’s deck…but goes ahead and does the readings anyway. There’s not really much of an explanation of how the reading actually works, and I would have liked to see a bit more detail about how using astrology/star signs worked with the Tarot cards.

Unsurprisingly, after the readings occur, it doesn’t take long before one of the group members dies, right after seeing a 3D version of her central card in the reading. I will say that I thought the physical appearance of the monsters were done really well, with the cards brought to life really well.

The buildup to the actual deaths was done fairly well, although I really would have liked to see a bit more attention paid to the actual readings. After Madeline is killed, the other characters talk about how her death fits the reading that Haley did for her. However, none of them think to consider that her readings would have served as warnings, which was a bit disappointing to see. I guess I can’t really talk about realism in a horror movie, but if I was in that situation, you can bet that I’d be trying to remember everything about my own reading so that I could not only have an idea about what might be coming, but also how to beat it.

I will say that I watched the movie Stay Alive, which pretty much used the same trope that appeared in this movie. A character is cornered by the supernatural threat, but their death isn’t actually shown…and they turn up miraculously alive later on. It was pretty obvious that when a movie shows all character deaths bar one, the one that it doesn’t show is the character who is revealed to still be alive by the end.

On the whole, I can’t really say that there was much that truly stood out to me about this movie. The characters made a poor decision at the beginning that ultimately ended with most of them getting killed. I do think this movie could have been better…which is a shame, considering that the Tarot card monsters had such great appearances. There were a couple of friends who saw the movie as well, though, and one of them really liked the movie, so…obviously, like all art, movies are subjective. If you enjoy horror movies, it’s probably still worth watching.