Curse of the Talisman

"Curse of the Talisman" is an endurable but completely pointless made-for-TV occult thriller that suffers a little too much from script-stupidity and it causes you to laugh during sequences when you ought to be scared. I'm sure the director as well as the young & enthusiast cast members all had good intentions to make this film a fantastic career move, but the subject matter is just too vague and the whole production completely lacks memorable aspects. The clumsy special effects and lousy acting performances are forgivable, but what's up with all this illogical nonsense the characters do and say? OK, question… In case you are requested to illegally guard a statue in your basement and some kind of living creature crawled out of it, would just assume it's an ordinary bat and start feeding it, no questions asked?!? Well, nobody would except for young hero Jeremy Campbell, who then regretfully discovers that the animal is a portentous gargoyle, still on its ancient mission to destroy the world along with the rest of his species. Together with his equally dumb high school friends and a very implausible priest character, Jeremy has to prevent the gargoyle from awakening his stoned friends in the museum. The story already isn't very interesting and then it still features the same old, annoying clichés like high-school popularity contests, the romance between the geek and the babe, the hippie bookstore owner and the entirely pointless & blurry dream-sequences! Yawn!! There are some incredibly imbecile plot-twists (for example, the priest suddenly comes up with an alternate and equally efficient way to destroy the gargoyles after a million fruitless attempts to stop them) and the "horrifying" monsters are actually pretty cute. They look somewhat like Gremlins with wings and shiny red eyes. The acting performances are quite embarrassing but Sara Gleeson is real beauty.

A crate of medieval relics delivered to Elmsford Museum falls into the wrong hands, and young Jeremy finds himself in possession of a sinister talisman. When a strange bat-like creature escapes from his cellar he has to take time out from romancing Fiona to save the town from an army of demons.

Sure it sounds good but it couldn't be any less scary, and includes every horror film cliche in the book. The first two-thirds of the film really drags, I found myself checking my watch, which is never a good sign.

Ok this film is bad. It's terrible if we're being honest.

But in it's favour I did watch it all the way through, which puts it above numerous others that I could mention.

You see, it has that 'so bad it's funny' quality than can be greatly entertaining if you're in that kind of mood. For example, when the monster first emerges from a statue, the lead character's initial response is to say 'Cool!' and then go and get his best friend to come and take a look. This is later explained away by them saying they thought it was a hibernating bat, because as we all know bats regularly hibernate inside statues. He soon realises that it wasn't a bat, after reading a book entitled 'The beginner's guide to what bats look like, and it's NOT that!'. Or something.

As for the monster, I was disappointed that there was just one for a start. The plot that I'd read said 'a town is over-run by demonic gargoyles', and this was a low-down lie. There are more eventually, but for the majority of the film it's just one of the critters flying about in search of the Talisman so that it can bring the others back to life. Suffice to say the monster looked rubbish. The kind that whenever there was a close-up of it it opens it's mouth wide and goes 'WRAAAK!!!' in an oh so scary fashion.

Trying to stop it are the Australian Scooby Doo gang. A few schoolkids who all used to be in Australian soap operas. Oh and a priest from 'Yorkshire, England'. Every time he told someone he was from 'Yorkshire, England' I burst out laughing. This would be the 'Yorkshire, England' that's just next to Australia I think.

Everything else that happens is of similar high quality. The trap that they set up to catch the creature, taken directly from an episode of Scooby Doo. The parent's Halloween costumes (Bill Gates and the Queen, no kidding). The bizarre funny climax.

It's all great. Or at least it would be if it weren't so very very poor.

Hmm... This movie was nice, but not very intelligent. The guy who wrote it doesn't seem to have understand the difference between alchemy and black magic. The only really cool thing about this movie, is that the main character drives a VOLVO, without even having a drivers licence! As a Swede, this makes me very warm at heart...

Oh dear, what a disaster.

So we have a bunch of gargoyles shipped over from Yorkshire. They have a talisman serving as the blue touch-paper. Use blood to light. The gargoyles break out into little beasties that will devastate a chosen town as some kind of retribution for collective sins. Spawned in Medieval times using black magic. Oh yes. And let nobody ask for any more detailed information than that, as we only spent 10 minutes on back story.

Billy from 'Neighbours' faffs about with his poor accent. Though I shall go easy on the lad. Aussie talk is English with a twang. US talk is a different twang coupled with over pronunciation. Still, Selina from 'Home and Away' manages quite well.

Oh, the film. Starts ok. Beastie gets free, whole movie plummets. It becomes slow, we all know what's going to happen. Scenes are crowbar'd in to explain stuff. Subplots are thin and awkward. Beastie vision is like looking through a pint of snakebite'n'black. Beastie will viciously wolf down sausages and cooked meat, but kills dogs with a slight graze of the belly and leaves them.

Just once in one of these movies I want a crazy character to rant and rave about totally implausible demon, and the other guy not spit on him and call him a drunk loony, but instead just randomly help him hunt his demon as they've got nothing better to do.

I shall blame the director for the excessive cheese factor towards the end. People just don't behave in the way that is filmed here. A mild recovery is made in the last 10 seconds, which makes me think the story was told from the wrong point of view.

The plot had potential, which is probably why it is now a movie. But it needed more thought and filling out. About 70% will laugh at it, 10% will love it. 20% will be checking the skies for flying... what's that.. aaaaggh.