348 Best Suspenseful Movies to Watch (Page 24)

Tarot’s biggest success is managing to resemble not just a sterile horror comedy, but bits of an actual feel-good horror film (in hindsight, of course it's possible with Ned from Spider Man). The tarot-reading cold open gives us lovely friend group vibes and makes astrology/tarot feel accessible, though it does become the vehicle for wordy and blatant foreshadowing. Still, the most striking scenes of the film come in generic scenes of isolation, which is a shame for that initial friendship dynamic. As a result, we’re left with a promising and friendly adventure in horror that ultimately drags and peters out into forgettable nothingness.

Genre: Horror

Actor: Adain Bradley, Avantika, Harriet Slater, Humberly González, Jacob Batalon, James Swanton, Larsen Thompson, Olwen Fouéré, Wolfgang Novogratz

Director: Anna Halberg, Spenser Cohen

Rating: PG-13

Not to be confused with James Cameron’s 1989 film, The Abyss isn’t the worst disaster film, but it could have been so much more. Inspired by the earthquake that actually happened in the real life town of Kiruna, there’s an important story here about worker safety, responsible mining, improving emergency protocols, and preserving the environment. However, like plenty of disaster movies, the film plays out in the most predictable ways, attaching a frankly irrelevant family drama that takes time away from the terrifying, claustrophobic nightmare that could have been. It does have decent effects, and even some decent scenes, but The Abyss is more interested in using the real life earthquake to manufacture drama, rather than actually looking into the manmade disaster.

Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller

Actor: Angela Kovács, Edvin Ryding, Felicia Truedsson, Göran Gillinger, Jakob Hultcrantz Hansson, Jakob Öhrman, Jonathan Fredriksson, Kardo Razzazi, Katarina Ewerlöf, Peter Franzén, Tintin Poggats Sarri, Tuva Novotny

Director: Richard Holm

Rating: R