New horror movie Tarot is like a James Wan movie meets The Twilight Zone – with some Spielberg thrown in, too
Apr. 17, 2024Exclusive: Co-directors Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen tease what to expect from upcoming supernatural horror Tarot
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Tarotdirectors Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen have revealed the biggest inspirations behind the new horror movie, from Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg and James Wan’s films to iconic TV series The Twilight Zone.
“[It’s] a fun movie with fun scares. We always go back to older movies,” Cohen tellsSFX magazinein the new issue, which featuresDoctor Whoon the cover. “We looked at Alien a lot – there’s not a missed second in that film, it’s just perfect. We also looked at John Carpenter’s The Thing, and we looked at Jaws. We were always going back to these movies from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s to be inspired by. Those are our favorites.”
Starring Pennyworth’s Harriet Slater, Mean Girls' Avantika Vandanapu, and Spider-Man’s Jacob Batalon, Tarot sees a group of youngsters find an ancient-looking deck of the titular cards, and use them to read their respective fortunes. Soon, though, they realize that by engaging with them, they’ve unwittingly unleashed the unspeakable evil trapped inside the pack – and exposed themselves to grisly, divination-related deaths. To save themselves, the group must band together to stop their predicated fates from becoming reality.
Adain Bradley, Humberly González, Olwen Fouéré, Wolfgang Novogratz, and Larsen Thompson round out the cast.
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“I’ve never found gore particularly scary,” Halberg adds, teasing what to expect from the supernatural flick. “Most of the time we feel it’s what you don’t see and where the audience uses their imagination that’s scarier than what you do see. For us, it’s really about the tension and insinuating what’s happening instead of showing it on screen.”
Tarot releases on May 3 in the US and in the UK. The above is just a snippet from our interview, available inthe latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Doctor Who on the cover and is available on newsstands from Wednesday, April 17.
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I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.
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