Olwen Fouere Archives – CULTURE MIX

May 9, 2024

by Carla Hay

Larsen Thompson in “Tarot” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

“Tarot” (2024)

Directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state, the horror film “Tarot” (based on Nicholas Adams’ “Horrorscope” novel) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Asian, one African American and on Latina) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Seven college students experience deadly terror after using a mysterious set of tarot cards that don’t belong to them.

Culture Audience: “Tarot” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching boring and badly made horror films.

A scene from “Tarot” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

Dull and unimaginative, “Tarot” is nothing but a putrid sinkhole of idiotic horror movie clichés involving young people and supernatural serial killings. The ending of this time-wasting junk is absolutely abysmal. “Tarot” doesn’t even have an original title, since there are at least five other movies with the same title.

Written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, “Tarot” is based on Nicholas Adams’ 1992 “Horrorscope” novel, which is about a serial killer who murders young people, based on horoscopes. “Tarot” actually has more in common with the “Final Destination” movies, which are about cursed young people who know they are going to die a certain way but they try to escape their fates.

“Tarot” (which takes place in New York state) begins by showing seven college students at a rented house in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains. The seven students are all friends and have gathered to celebrate the birthday of one of the friends. The seven pals in this group are:

Haley (played by Harriet Slater), the unofficial leader of the group who is also supposed to be the smartest one in this very stupid movie.
Grant (played by Adain Bradley), Haley’s love interest who is a generically dependable “good guy.”
Elise (played by Larsen Thompson), a “spoiled diva” type whose birthday is being celebrated.
Paige (played by Avantika), a not-very-smart ditz, who’s obsessed with social media.
Madeline (played by Humberly González), a bland sidekick who is very close to Paige.
Lucas (played by Wolfgang Novogratz), a good-looking “bad boy” who seems to be attracted to Madeline.
Paxton (played by Jacob Batalon), a talkative wisecracker who tells a lot of cringeworthy jokes.

During this getaway trip at this rented house, Lucas breaks into a locked room that has a sign on the front that says “Private – Keep Out.” The room leads to a dusty basement (of course it does) filled with numerous mementos related to astrology. Inside the basement room, the students find a box with a Zodiac queen illustration on the front of the box and a set of tarot cards inside the box.

Haley is the one in the group who knows the most about tarot cards, since she has been using tarot cards for years. Even though Haley says that it’s bad luck for someone to use tarot cards that belong to someone else, the some of the pals urge her to use the tarot cards anyway. Haley gives tarot readings to everyone in the group, based on their astrology signs and what tarot cards are dealt.

Not everyone in the group wants to get a tarot reading. Grant is the most reluctant and is the most skeptical one in the group. Haley and Grant (who were perceived as the “perfect couple” by their friends) reveal soon after these tarot card readings that they have broken up. Their friends are shocked by this breakup news, but they soon will have life and death matters to deal with whenthey find out they are being targeted by an evil force.

As already revealed in the “Tarot” trailer, the tarot readings have placed a curse on these seven people. Their tarot readings predicted how they would die, while the astrology signs of each person predict how they would each react to these deadly situations. A character from each of the tarot cards comes to life, based on the last tarot card that each person was dealt during Haley’s tarot card reading. The death scenes are not scary and are very sloppily edited.

At one point in the story, it’s discovered that the tarot cards belonged to a high priestess (played by Lucy Ridley), who was persecuted for being a witch in Hungary in 1798. The surviving students enlist the help of a disgraced astrologer named Alma (played by Olwen Fouéré), a stereotypical elderly sage who acts as a guide to less-informed characters in horror movies. “Tarot” is just a mush of poorly staged death scenes, bad dialogue and unimpressive acting until the movie’s ludicrous and moronic ending.

Screen Gems released “Tarot” in U.S. cinemas on May 3, 2024.

January 25, 2024

by Carla Hay

“Cult Killer”

Directed by Jon Keeyes

Culture Representation: Taking place in Dublin, the crime drama film “Cult Killer” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Latin person and one black person) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A librarian-turned-private-investigator is hired by the police to assist in investigating the death of a colleague and to find the serial killer who is murdering wealthy people in the area.

Culture Audience: “Cult Killer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Antonio Banderas and don’t mind watching murder mysteries that have plot holes and ridiculous scenarios.

Antonio Banderas and Alice Eve in “Cult Killer” (Photo courtesy of Saban Films)

“Cult Killer” took a potentially intriguing story idea about a vengeful serial killer and ruined it with a messy plot holes, too many flashbacks, and an idiotic showdown scene that sinks this movie into a pile of cinematic garbage. This is the type of movie where most of the acting isn’t terrible, but the film becomes undone by the way it’s written and directed. There are moments of suspense in finding out the motive for the killings, but once that motive is revealed, “Cult Killer” becomes a predictable and mindless mush.

Directed by Jon Keeyes and written by Charles Burnley, “Cult Killer” takes place in Dublin. The movie was filmed on location in Ireland. The locations are some of the few authentic-looking things about “Cult Killer.” The movie’s cinematography gives everything a dark blueish-green tint that makes “Cult Killer” look like an unnecessarily murky-looking film.

“Cult Killer” also relies too heavily on flashbacks, which might or might not confuse viewers. From these flashbacks, viewers can learn that a widower private investigator named Mikeal Tallini (played by Antonio Banderas) befriended and became a sponsor to an alcoholic librarian named Cassie Holt (played by Alice Eve), who was sexually abused by her stepgrandfather when she was 8 to about 18 years old. Cassie secretly recorded the abuse, which was used as evidence to put her abuser in prison for a number of years.

Now in her early 40s, Cassie (who is originally from England) eventually sobered up and began working with Mikeal (who is originally from Spain) as a private investigator. He mentored her by teaching her investigative skills and fight skills. Mikeal has a friendly relationship with a Dublin police sergeant named Rory McMahon (played by Paul Reid), who is investigating the death of a wealthy elderly man named John Abernathy. It soon becomes apparent that people in John’s social circle are being targeted for murder.

Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that something happens to Mikeal that puts Cassie on the case to find this killer. John’s social circle includes a wealthy married couple named Dottie Evans (played by Olwen Fouéré) and Edgar Evans (played by Nick Dunning); the Evans couple’s sleazy attorney Victor Harrison (played by Matthew Tompkins); and a fixer/investigator employed by Victor named Wallace (played by Kim DeLonghi), who is hired by Victor to clean up his clients’ scandalous messes.

There’s also a mysterious American in her 20s named Jamie Douglas (played by Shelley Hennig), who singles out Cassie to establish a rapport with her. Most of the investigation revolves around the Evans couple’s mansion where John was killed. After a while, it becomes obvious what the motive of the murders is, even before the motive is actually revealed in the movie.

Because the killer and motive are revealed about halfway through the movie, “Cult Killer” becomes a messy back-and-forth of showing the killer evading capture and showing flashbacks to the platonic working relationship between Cassie and Mikeal. Cassie is the movie’s protagonist, but Eve’s acting in the role is often stiff and dull. Banderas mumbles a lot in this film. Some of the flashbacks become very irritating after a while and don’t really add much meaning to the story. They are essentially “filler” scenes to distract from the flimsy plot that falls apart by the end of the movie.

There’s a pivotal scene toward the end of “Cult Killer” that makes no sense. Viewers who see this scene must ask themselves: “If these very wealthy people are being targeted for murder, what are they doing walking on a street with no security protection, when they have aggressive security people guarding their house?” It’s one of many questions that have no answers in “Cult Killer,” because a substandard crime drama like this one has too many plot holes to be believable.

Saban Films released “Cult Killer” in select U.S. cinemas on January 19, 2024.

Tag: Olwen Fouere

Review: ‘Tarot’ (2024), starring Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika, Wolfgang Novogratz, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson and Jacob Batalon

Review: ‘Cult Killer,’ starring Alice Eve, Shelley Hennig, Paul Reid and Antonio Banderas