I drew a single tarot card this morning. The Devil, upside down. The Baphomet. So we meet again. We’ve in the past and we’ve met recently, too. To me, this is not a negative card, as good as any God to me. But it’s also moving, in that it addresses what I’m thinking about lately: breaking cycles; freeing myself from my powerlessness in addiction; and releasing my limiting beliefs which no longer benefit me. A perfect one-card reading.
We sat in bed and laid out the tarot cards. Gave each other readings, more general ones, using basic spreads. It’s hard to really know what they mean yet. Some of them seem loaded with meaning, so relevant to what I’ve brought to the situation, and with others, I can hardly understand the context of what they mean.
It was a great way to take in the movie Tarot, though, now playing on Netflix. The high concept of the movie is that some kids are playing with tarot cards and the cards that are set down turn into actual real-life embodiments of the dark arts represented on the cards.
It’s really a fun premise which is sold by good makeup and costume design. The creatures look good and like they belong on tarot cards, as though they’ve come to life off of the card stock.
There’s nothing particularly notable or new about how the story progresses from here. It’s just your average high concept horror movie. The young actors are all playing into the corny material just as the material calls for. The shots are fine. The editing is basic.
There are some fun setups and they’re generally more tied to character moments than these things usually tend to be. The payoffs are just enough to breeze through the rest and the movie passes so quickly and painlessly, that it’s almost worth the recommendation, as a second-screen Netflix horror thing.
Perfectly fine in every way. What you expect. No diversions. And really, that’s a worthwhile thing, just to deliver on a low bar of expectations, to fulfill a light promise for escape. Maybe someone else could really nail it in a sequel but in the meantime, I’m just waiting for My Devil to come.