Talisman (1998)

Just perfect...

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

TALISMAN is yet another late 90s Full Moon release that was filmed on location in Bucharest, Romania (no doubt a cheaper place to produce these 'B' horrors). This one was directed by David DeCoteau under the name "Victoria Sloan," the same alias he used to direct two other Full Moon releases - SHRIEKER (1997) and CURSE OF THE PUPPET MASTER (1998). Now Mr. DeCoteau has had an interesting enough career, I guess. He started out making gay porn under the name "David McCabe" before churning out some popular cult classic 'Scream Queen' movies in the late 80s/early 90s. He then moved on to Full Moon Studios for a period of time before forming his very own studio called Rapid Heart Pictures, which specialize in (awful) homoerotic horror flicks that are basically just thinly-disguised excuses to feature hairless young men running around in their underwear. This effort, which is better than anything DeCoteau would make with Rapid Heart, is more of a happy medium. While there are a couple of the expected underwear scenes here, there's also some blood, a plot, a good filming location and a couple of actors who seem to actually be actors instead of Calvin Klein models who couldn't emote if their life depended on it.At a European boys school, supposedly a place where wealthy people drop off their trouble-making kids, mysterious new student Elias Storm (Billy Parish) has just enrolled. Most of the other students are away at break, aside from about a half-dozen guys. There's a friendly black guy named Jacob (Walter Jones), a bully named Burke (Jason Andelman) and a couple of Eastern European guys who seem to have been horribly dubbed. The school is run by the stern and strict Mrs. Greynitz (Oana Stefanescu), who has a shy, attractive young daughter named Lilia (Ilinca Goia) she forbids the students from talking to. There's also some some bald demon dude who roams the halls, has red glowing eyes and rips out hearts. It all has something to do with a talisman necklace, human sacrifices, the new millennium approaching and flashbacks to when Elias saw his parents trying to perform some ceremony in a graveyard. Unlike what DeCoteau started putting out a few years after this, there are decent sets, OK special effects and a few bloody moments (including eyeballs getting poked out). Though most of the younger male actors are predictably awful, the performances from the Romanian actors - Goica, Stefanescu, Claudiu Trandafir as the school's doctor and (especially) Constantin Barbulescu as the caped demon - help to carry the film pretty well.So while this is nothing special and runs only 72 minutes (barely over an hour if you exclude the credits), it's still watchable for the most part and that's more than I can say for the director's endless series of boxer brief "horror" films of late. For the faithful, you do get some guys doing push-ups in their underwear, but that's about it.

Oh my goodness! I've not seen the most silliest show on Earth. It was so predictable. It's like "Here I come to rip out your heart!" and then "Oh, no!". You get what I mean? It was simply stupid. My friend paid RM12.90 for the original DVD, thinking it will be good. Boy, were we wrong! Oh and by the way, the lines were so corny and lame. It was a miracle I made it out fine.But I have to say. The sources for rituals, witchcraft, fallen angels etc. of the movie was good. That compelled me but other than that, NOT AT ALL! Readers, do not watch this movie. You'll thank me, trust me. You haver no idea how speechless I am right now.

Granted, this is not one of the better movies to come out of Full Moon since their departure from Paramount. It isn't one of the worst, either. David Decoteau (under alias), directs this seemingly gothic movie. I say "seemingly" because, where is is dark and dreary (which I liked that), it still doesn't develop into the dark, gothic opus it really could have.I have noticed...Quit a few Full Moon films take a really good idea, and destroy it with low budget films, full of bad acting, bad directing and silly scripts. I really feel they should allow outside talent. Anyway, this was a good idea, which is described in other reviews, so I will leave it out. The sets were very dark and gloomy, the cemetary was kinda creepy in that European cemetary kinda way. The Fallen Angel, was kinda silly looking, but worked on the budget. The blood spraying was utterly silly and the 2-dimensional CGI flames were just pitiful.This really could have been a decent movie, given a bigger budget and a director that really understand the subject matter. 5 out of 10

It's said that if you put a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters, one will write a shakespearean play. The other 999,999 are likely to write something like this.The plot borders on the non-existent, the deaths are meaningless, the characters as 2 dimensional as the flaming-heart special effects. Overall, this isn't a film I'd recommend to the discerning horror film fan.The fact it's rated "15" in England kinda lets on to the fact that it's no Elm Street, and the constant flashbacks take the film from the "mind numbing" category into the "annoying" one. The film features topics such as incest, demon worship and serial killing - seemingly, the base for a great film. However, the wooden acting (basing the film abroad gives birth to a new realm of stupidity in cheesy accents) and gratuitous special effects restricted to glowing red eyes and heart-ripping, mean that this film is as horrifying as...well....starring in it.Harsh? Not really. If there's a plotline running through this film and not just a rehashing of more clichés than there are murders then I failed to notice it. The characters aren't fleshed out at all, the deaths follow no visible pattern and all in all the film is more predictable than a James Bond innuendo.It's hard to come up with one word to sum this entire film up, especially without resorting to the libellous. I'd hesitate to describe it as "terrible" since it does provide some hints and tips to new writers how NOT to write a script. I'll settle for "laughable".