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Why Tarot star Harriet Slater's horror movie 'resurgence' claim is a little hollow
Maybe she's been avoiding the reviews.
Tarot star Harriet Slater has claimed horror movies are enjoying "a real resurgence" at the moment, but is that entirely true when the critics are tearing a large chunk of them apart?
Co-directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, the genre's latest entry sees Slater (last on the big screen as Fran in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) playing a teenager named Haley, who has a penchant for reading tarot cards.
Haley and a group of pals rent an Airbnb only to discover a cursed deck in the property, which of course she begins to use. Cue a string of grisly college kid deaths.
Following the movie's release, Slater told RadioTimes: "It's an exciting time for horror movies right now – they're having a real resurgence. The ones that really scare me are the ones based in real stories, like Midsommar, because it almost could be real. That film really scared me; I couldn't watch it again!"
This Midsommar reference is fairly used in context to a supposed resurgence of the genre - Ari Aster's 2019 folk horror was one of the most deeply chilling experiences you can have at the cinema - yet Slater's own movie has spent the past 24 hours being ridiculed by the press, making her suggestion a little wobbly-legged.
In his two-star review for The Guardian, Benjamin Lee described Tarot as "a film wisely kept from critics until the very last second and one that audiences would be smart to keep themselves from too.
"It's not quite as bad as these things can often be but flashes of competence are not enough to distract from a sense of crushing pointlessness, more watery slop served up lukewarm for undemanding Friday night horror fans, who really ought to be demanding so much more," he added.
Variety's Todd Gilchrist even accused the filmmakers of repeatedly leveraging "the genre's laziest mood-setting and suspense-building devices to keep its audience on the edge of their seats", while GamesRadar+ essentially labelled it a poor imitation of Final Destination.
Let's be real for a minute: for every Talk To Me and Late Night with The Devil, there's a Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Night Swim, or Imaginary lurking around the corner - all released in the last couple of years.
This isn't a resurgence, it's merely the continuous trend of the horror world that gifts fans a genuine diamond in the rough once in a blue moon.
Tarot is now in cinemas.
