I struggle giving this very generic horror film three stars… but it has merit in ways I didn’t expect. Because, yeah, this is just a gimmicky PG13 horror film that everyone will have forgotten in a couple months.

The flick is about a bunch of twenty somethings partying at a rented mansion (as you do) who find a particularly creepy tarot deck in a particularly creepy basement. So, of course, their armchair medium gives them all readings. Too bad she didn’t realize it was a CURSED tarot deck <insert dramatic music here>.

Yeah, it’s a gimmick in the same way Ouija or Annabelle or that one about the dybbuk box were gimmicks. Just a toy/item concept they can slot into a story about dumb people doing a dumb and winding up with ghosts, or curses, or demons haunting them. You’ve seen the story before… this one does it too.

But it does it with surprisingly good camerawork, clever editing, and a very good palette of blacks and dark imagery. The movie is technically better than it has any right to be. And the quality of the direction and editing were enough to keep me less bored than I expected to be. In fact, I’m embarrassed to say, I was even a little invested.

Too bad It isn’t scary, at least not to me. It’s just all jump scares all the time with a decently designed spooky demon monster thing. A couple of the characters are interesting enough to care if the spooky gets them… but mostly it’s just generic horror movie victims all the way down.

<shrug> It’s only a recommendation if you’re bored and want something to put on to waste time. It’s a very low 3 stars, edging on 2.5 but the technical aspect kept me from being too bored.

But you will say “Tarot? Which one was that?” in a few months.

Score: 76