Is The 2024 Tarot Movie Connected To Insidious?

Since the first trailer of Tarot dropped, horror fans have been excitedly waiting for the movie to air, waiting for what seems like the best horror movie in 2024. Despite not being out yet, fans are asking questions, drawing parallels with other well-known horror movies and franchises like Talk to Me and the Insidious franchise, and even stirring up controversies about its name change. Let’s dive in, shall we?

What is Tarot About?

Tarot tells the terrifying tale of a group of college friends who, like many horror tropes, mess with a way of contacting the dead and a supernatural practice that they have no idea about or respect for and deal with the consequences.

This group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of tarot readings, unleashing a terrible evil trapped within the cards, which the kids had no idea was cursed.

After an unnerving but relatively normal experience, the friends carry on with their lives, only to realise that they are suffering seemingly random events that cause them to start dying off one by one. Eventually, after putting two and two together, the friends realise that they are dying in ways related to the fortunes that were read from the tarot cards.

Really putting their friendship to the test, the remaining friends have to work together to uncover the mystery of what is causing their friends to die before none of them are left to set things right.

Tarot Wasn’t Always Its Name

As many fans already know, the Upcoming Film wasn’t always called Tarot because it was previously called Horrorscope. According to Dexerto, many fans loved the play on words of horror literally being in the name. They were devastated when they realised the name had been shortened and changed to Tarot.

While fans loved the previous name, there was a good reason behind the name change. When the movie first entered development under the name Horrorscope, it was because it is the name of the 1992 novel by Nicholas Adams on which the movie is loosely based.

Chatting to Bloody Disgusting, director Spenser Cohen shared that nothing survived the adaptation from book to movie and that you couldn’t even call it being based on the book because they took nothing from it. Saying that the directors hadn’t even read the original book, sharing that, “The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked…Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.”

The decision to make this name change stemmed from the fact that the movie’s premise had nothing to do with horoscopes, the Zodiac, or astrology. According to Anna Halberg, Sony had initially requested a movie about astrology. Still, the directing duo agreed there was no natural way to turn astrology into a terrifying concept.

“There’s nothing inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie.”—Anna Halberg.

Tarot Is 2024’s Talk To Me

On many occasions, Tarot has been dubbed “2024’s Talk to Me,” and for good reason. While the 2023 A24 horror took the world by storm, one of the biggest draws of the film was its reliance on practical effects rather than CGI for many of its scenes.

The connection to Talk to Me started when fans first saw the trailer for the 2024 movie, with fans retweeting the trailer on X, asking, “Could this be 2024’s #talktome?”

could this be 2024’s #talktome ?

— A.D.O. Radio (@adoradio0) January 30, 2024

Like Talk to Me, the directors of Tarot asserted that it was important for them to go the practical route rather than the CGI route. “We want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances.”

Speaking with Dexerto, the directors shared that they had been excited to work with character designer Trevor Henderson to design these characters and terrifying creatures that would be brought to life through practical effects because of his ability to turn anything familiar into something unnatural and unnerving.

Fans have also drawn connections between the tarot cards, which are the central idea of Tarot, and the “mummified” occult hand, which is the focal point of the ritual used to contact the dead in Talk to Me. Either way, we must wait for the movie to see if fans are right about this theory.

Connection To Insidious

After watching the movie trailer for Tarot, many fans (us included) wondered if the film had any connection to the award-winning horror franchise Insidious, and as it turns out, fans aren’t too far off in thinking this.

In short, there is a significant connection to the Insidious franchise, but not one you might expect. Instead of being connected to the story and the events or borrowing actors or characters, the directors’ inspiration from the franchise was much more subtle.

There is one particular “villain” or creature in the movie called The Magician, and while information hasn’t been released about the nature of this creature (thank goodness, because we don’t want any spoilers), what has been shared about the character is the genius composer who created the original theme for the character, Joseph Bishara.

If you are a horror movie fan, you will likely remember this composer’s name from work like Conjuring and Malignant and, surprisingly, Insidious. We say “surprisingly” because Bishara wasn’t on board the Insidious franchise because he was a composer on the project, but rather as the infamous Lipstick Demon that terrorised characters and fans for many years.

While Tarot doesn’t have Bishara acting in the movie as Insidious did, the co-directors wanted this composer to have a place in their film, especially since they were fans of Insidious.

Tarot will be released for horror fans worldwide to enjoy on May 3^rd, 2024, and in select cinemas worldwide on May 10^th, 2024.