Tapping into the Spookiness of the Tarot: Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen Discuss Their Upcoming Film ‘Tarot’

Filmmakers Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen have been writing together since they were undergraduates at USC. Their long history of working together has given them a certain synergy. According to Spenser, “We have two brains but we function as one brain so the collaboration process between us is amazing.” They’ve always been fans of horror, with some of their favorite scary films being The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, and Silence of the Lambs.

Their latest project and their directorial debut is the upcoming horror flick Tarot. Script Magazine spent time recently chatting with them about how the project came to be and their writing and directing process and experience.

The Wheel of Fortune

Anna and Spenser have always been fascinated with astrology so when Sony approached them about doing a project based on the ancient divination art, it didn’t take them long to figure out their story angle.

Anna: There was nothing that was inherently scary to us about horoscopes but what was scary to us and something we've always been fascinated with is the idea of Tarot cards and Tarot readings. There's something really terrifying about this idea that you could potentially know the future so we came up with this original idea and went back to Sony.

Spenser: One of the first things we decided was tone. We wrote this during COVID, a time where we were all locked in and feeling miserable. We knew we wanted to tell a fun tale that was also scary. It was important that we were able to achieve both those things. A lot of the world was depressing and bleak and a lot of the stuff that was being made felt the same. Even though we love those movies and there's a time and place for them, we wanted to recapture the feel of movies we loved when we were kids like Jurassic Park, Poltergeist, and films like that. 

When we set out we wanted to make a film that felt like a mix between James Wan and Stephen Spielberg. When it's scary, it's scary. When it's fun, it's fun. And in between there's suspense, great characters, and emotion. That was what we set out to do before we wrote a single word.

During research, one of the things that captured their attention was just how long tarot has been used. The study of astrology and the arcane art of tarot has been practiced for centuries.

Spenser: We were intrigued by just how far back astrology goes. Back to the earliest civilizations, people looked to the stars for answers. It's crazy that even today we're still doing that and it's a big part of the cultural zeitgeist. Tarot goes back hundreds of years. Its beginning is a little murky. We read some estimates that it might be the 1300s. 800 years later and we're still doing it and it's popular.

Anna: It's so interesting that tarot evolved into this powerful tool for divination, self-reflection, and for people to find clarity about the future.

They’ve both had tarot readings, with Spenser being more the skeptic.

Spenser: There's a character in the movie who's a skeptic and I feel like we based that character somewhat on me. I'm very much a skeptic with a lot of things like this. It was interesting to get tarot readings done because the stuff that was said to me, some of it felt impossible that anyone could know. So, maybe there's something there, even if I have a skeptical lens on it.

Strength

The tarot deck used in the moving is quite striking. Anna and Spenser already had in mind who they wanted their artist to be when they started the project.

Spenser: We worked with this artist named Trevor Henderson. He's incredible. He posts on social media. He'll take a photograph and create all these creatures and monsters. We didn't meet with anyone else. We only wanted him for this and we knew that for this movie to work, we needed something iconic. 

When you think of Annebelle, that doll is iconic. You look at it and it gives you a lot of emotion. We knew we needed to take these archetypes from the deck that everyone was familiar with and paint them in a light that was unsettling and eerie and yet somehow familiar. 

To finalize that process, our production designer Felicity worked with Richard Wells out of the U.K. who's this amazing graphic designer, and he was able to take all of these amazing concepts from Trevor and turn them into these old, gross tarot cards that you see in the movie.

Several tarot card archetypes come alive in the movie. Do Anna and Spenser have a favorite?

Anna: I would say today, mine is probably The Fool, but it changes. I love the iconography of it. I love that it's a playful character but there's also something terrifying about jester's and clownlike figures for me.

Spenser: Mine's the magician. My first love when I was a child was magic and that's the reason I got into movies...the magic of cinema and what you can do on the screen. I connected with the archetype of the dark magician. There's a lot of magic and alchemy that goes into leading or tricking an audience. It's kind of a magic trick. It’s sleight of hand.

The World

This marks the first feature this dynamic duo has directed. It was a fruitful experience for them and they carried away morsels of knowledge.

Anna: It was an incredible experience. Spenser and I have written features before and we've produced features before but this is the first time we've directed a feature. It's so fun to come up with something in your head, write it down on a piece of paper, and then be able to bring it to life. 

I really do feel like the end product of this movie is not only what we set out to make, not only in the tone but in the visuals, but is also the story we wanted to tell. I feel so lucky that we had the opportunity to do that. Doing this project reinforced what we already knew, which is that you can make a bad movie from a good script but you can't make a good movie from a bad script. Meaning, everything starts with the words on the page. It’s part of the reason I feel so lucky Spenser and I have spent so much time working on writing because it really did inform the process.

Spenser: Anna and I have always been pretty confident in our abilities but having gone through this experience, we learned a lot and have refined how we do everything. We also were able to collaborate with some amazing people on this film that we'll hopefully work with forever, like our DP Elie [Smolkin], who is a genius. The movie looks as good as it does because of him.

This Sony Pictures/Screen Gems release hits theaters on May 3, 2024.

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