Talisman

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".

Full Moon were never going to make award winning stuff but regardless they started several successful franchises and made some watchable stuff. Though to be fair considering how fast they pounded films out statistically that was bound to happen.

Talisman is one the lesser known works and for good reason. It revolves around a young man sent to an obscure school as students begin to get picked off one by one in an occult ceremony.

The stuff is very clichéd, immediately upon seeing a new character I predicted him to be the arrogant popular rich kid and low and behold that's exactly what he turned out to be.

Standard weak sfx, mediocre story and phoned in performances galore can be found in this 90 minutes of meh.

Not the worst Full Moon production but an instantly forgettable one all the same.

The Good:

Has that Full Moon charm

The Bad:

Undeededly homo erotic in places

Weak sfx

Clichéd

Poor finale

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

If Booboo Stewart and Mark Dacasos had a baby it would look like Billy Parish

If you like horror movies, you have probably seen this movie, done better, before. The special effects were weak, mainly red glowing eyes, and hearts being burned out of chests. The acting was half-hearted at best, the actors seemed bored by the whole affair. The basic premise of the movie, is two teenage siblings, separated by a mysterious event in the past, hold the key to stopping a (very small) cult from helping a fallen angel destroy the world. Naturally this happens at a boarding school somewhere. The accents in the movie were awful. The fallen angel resembled a constipated Uncle Festor from the Adams Family, but he was the most menacing and convincing character in the movie. Interestingly enough the talisman the movie is named after is a large pewter-looking necklace, that features an upside-down cross superimposed on an upside-down pentagram. There wasn't any real character development, so who cared who died or didn't, so it wasn't dramatic or spooky. There wasn't enough camp to make this it cheesy. No black comedy, to make it a cult classic, so I guess this just has to be a bad movie. Watch the original Satan's School for Girls instead. I think that may have been the inspiration for this anyway.

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

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.