Movie Tarot app review

Going to the movies is a very important aspect of almost everyone's lives today. We all love a good watch and want to make sure that our time and money spent are totally worth it. What if you could know that the next time you decide to watch a movie, it will definitely be worth your while? Enter Movie Tarot. Here's an app that sounds too good to be true.

Movie Tarot is an Android app that predicts a movie's performance at the box office before it is released, based on data collected from various news forums, blogs, videos, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and other sites. The data is then put together, crunched and the results offer meaningful insights. We played around with the app a bit and it was interesting to see what it can do.

A background check, the app has been developed by RIAFY, an 'incubatee' of Kochi-based Startup Village that comprises a group of 6 engineering students, mostly from Sree Narayana Gurukulam College of Engineering (Kochi). The company is known for its relational intelligence, predictive analysis and big data solutions as is evident from the app.

The app interface is a no brainer in terms of usage and is pretty intuitive. The app is a mere 819KB download taking just a couple of seconds to land on your device's home screen.

The main screen of the app greets you with three sections; Box Office Prediction, Happiness Factor and Trending Trailers.

Under Box Office Predictions you can access various Bollywood movies recently released along with new launches. In case you happened to stumble upon the app, you'll notice the latest Friday release, 'I, Me Aur Main' starring John Abraham, Chitrangada Singh and Prachi Desai listed with an expected opening of close to 14 crores.

The movies are lined up in a two-columned tile format or tarot cards, allowing you to read the title and the expected opening on the home screen itself.

Tapping on a particular movie will enlighten you with a gist of the movie, the lead actors and an essence of the buzz intensity surrounding that particular film. You can also see trending tweets related to the film that gives you an idea about what people are talking about a film that you are planning on watching.

The predictions are based on RIAFY's relational intelligence platform and data is crunched using the Tarot Engine. The back-end of Tarot predictions is fuelled by online metrics and RIAFY determines 'true.HAPPINESS' from the analysed data.

Various predictions include Blockbuster, Super-Hit, Hit, Average, Flop, Sleeper etc. At the bottom, you'll see predictions for the expected opening and the Life- Time collection the film is expected to pocket.

The movie Vishwaroop has been predicted a 'Sleeper'. For those unaware, Sleeper is a term used for a film that runs successfully for a long period and becomes a success even though it doesn't have a successful opening or isn't promoted well enough.

An important aspect to note here is that your fondness for watching a film is independent of its success. The app makers point out that if you favour a particular genre more above any other, you're highly likely to narrow down on that genre and then decide whether or not its worth your time.

So what is the measure to decide? Well the makers of Movie Tarot have devised an element called the Happiness Factor, which is the next segment of the app. This indicates the percentage of people who will be "truly happy" watching a film. It's needless to say, the greater the Happiness quotient, the more likely

It's worth mentioning that 'Kai Po Che', inspired by Chetan Bhagat's Three Mistakes of my Life had a 99.45% 'Hit' prediction with an expected opening of close to 18 crores with a Happiness Factor of 92%. The movie actually raked in 18.1 crores during its opening at the box office.

Similarly, the Happiness card for Special 26 has a 91%happiness quotient, which simply means that a very high percentage of people would return home from the cinemas, feeling good about the film. The movie has been predicted as 'Hit' with Life-Time moolah of Rs.70 crores.

The Trending Trailers section lists trailers that are currently popular amongst the public and currently the movies listed are Fast and Furious 6, David & Goliath, Kai Po Che, Zila Ghaziabad, Himmatwala and Iron Man 3. The trailers are of YouTube origin and you can tap on a movie to view a specific trailer.

This is another area that we were particularly disappointed. Unless you have a good connection speed, the video watching experience will be ruined. Also, there are no on-screen controls for pause, stop, volume and not even the streaming bar.

After using the app, we'd say that it is quite accurate. But not perfect. A movie like David was predicted with an expected opening of close to 5 crores, whereas the actual domestic collections of the movie stood at a mere 3.36 crores in the 3 weeks of its running up until now. But if we see the bigger picture, the app has also predicted a Life-Time figure of less than 12 crores and hence it is right in that way so to speak.

The app certainly offers an edge over conventional trailers and reviews in terms of predicting a hit or a miss in an instant. But it's important to note that the app also doesn't take into account the personal choices of a prospective movie viewer. A movie may have a positive buzz around it, but it may not necessarily match a person's preference.

As of writing this review, Movie Tarot stands at an average user rating of 4.9 on Google Play with 92 user reviews and has already seen over 2,000 downloads within 5 days of its launch. Users can rate Movie Tarot, read the Movie Tarot blog and also check for updates from within the Android app via the Menu button of their device.

John Mathew, co-founder and CEO of RIAFY has said that the app makes predictions on a number of factors that will be shared at various stages of movie promotion. This will help not just film producers and distributors to plan "effective promotion strategies" but also filmmakers.

As for future updates, creators of Movie Tarot promise Push Notifications and Navigation & Filters. The latter will go beyond Bollywood films and bring content in other languages as well and as the app content grows overtime, users will have access to more filtering options to select language & region preferences.

The app will also help users make instant movie plans with friends and also offer a pre-release buzz of movies in terms of how well the trailers, posters, songs etc. are being received by the audience.

Movie Tarot (Google Play, Free)