There are certain movies I watch expecting to hate. I click the play button with part of my psyche screaming, “why are you doing this? You know it’s going to be a hot mess of bad acting and insipid plot devices. Stop. STOP!”

Yet I never stop.

“Tarot” was one of these movies. But here’s the twist. It wasn’t bad.

The plot is as you’d expect. A group of twenty-something college students finds an old tarot deck in the weird house there are renting. A young woman among them has the skills to do fortune telling readings, which she does for her friends. And days later, they start dying off in ways clearly tied to those readings. As in the Final Destination movies, the characters are stalked by fate.

The acting is ok—sometimes it’s hard to discern bad acting from bad editing. if you don’t cut scenes correctly, like the rhythm of a conversation gets lost.

The cast does include Jacob Batalon (Ned Leeds from the current Spider-man movies) as a class clown who got a few out-loud laughs out of me.

At least two of the death scenes were genuinely memorable, including a horrifying “trapped in a box” scenario.

The CGI scary faces and moving shapes thrilled me less.

All in all, “Tarot” was a pleasant find, and I’d check out a sequel if it got made. If you watch it, stick around after the first moments of the end credits because there’s a final scene that closes up a plot hole.