Simply A Masterpiece

People are voting emotionally.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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

Arriving at a strange European college, a student finds that a summoned demon that is trying to open the gates of Hell to unleash Armageddon on mankind requires his services to complete the ritual and tries to stop it.While this one may not be one of the best entries out there, there's some decent stuff here. One of the better facets here is the film's rather nice mixture of sorcery and black magic, with the rituals being prepared here for the final ceremony, the location being a great setting for some Gothic atmosphere with its darkened hallways, eerie cemetery and expansive rooms within to make for some decent moments at times when this one really gets its solid plot going as there's some general creepiness on display here. There's a lot of mystery wrung out of this that it captivates what little attention that could have been given, and the storyline is pretty clever, giving the viewer the feeling that anything can go wrong. That said, there's still plenty to dislike here, from the exceptionally short running time that barely gives this one an hour-long running time, a rather unimposing supernatural killer that doesn't evoke fear at all, and a rather inane amount of time spent on flashbacks that aren't that exciting or thrilling, and when added to this one's low-budget gloss, comes up rather lacking in the end.Rated R: Violence and some language.

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.

`Talisman' has to be one of David DeCouteau's unseen masterpieces, as he manages to turn a cliché storyline into a movie that has to rank as a Full Moon type film.**SPOILERS**In a strange European college, a man is killed by a strange demon (Costi Barbulescu) with glowing eyes. A young man, Elias (Billy Parish) meets up with Jacob (Walter Jones) who shows him around. Immediately, trouble starts in the form of Burke. (Jason Adelman) The headmistress, Miss Greynitz, (Oana Stefanescu) rules the school with an iron fist, keeping everyone there in a state of fear. Wanting to relieve some tension, Elias takes a walk, against Burke's better judgment, and wanders into the library. There, he finds Miss Greynitz's daughter, Lilia. (Ilinca Goia) She seems afraid of her mother, who makes her do weird things at night. Lilia is involved in weird satanic rituals with the same demon, and kills two of Burke's friends. The next morning, Elias does some investigating on the campus and begins to unravel the mystery of how he came to the same place where his supposedly insane uncle was working. Burke comes into control of the school and tries to rape Lilia, but the demon comes to protect her. Burke and another friend are killed. Elias sees this, and Miss Greynitz catches him. The next day, on the eve of the new millennium, Elias digs more into the back history of what brought him to the college. Convinced now that Lilia is in danger, he finds out that he is wrong. He finds five of the seven sacrifices needed to bring out the apocalypse. As midnight nears, Jacob becomes the sixth and Lilia reveals herself as the one from whom sacred books say will bring about the end of days. Lilia makes a proposition to Elias: take her hand as second in command or be burned like the rest of humanity. The Good News: `Talisman' is one of the few films that clocks in at less than an hour long, but an awful lot happens in that short amount of time. There is a lot of mystery wrung out of this that it captivates what little attention one could have given to this movie. The storyline is pretty clever, giving the viewer the feeling that anything can go wrong. Making the least likely person the head of the whole apocalyptic plan was a bit of a stretch to believe thinking about afterward, but it keeps the viewer hooked into thinking anything. The apocalyptic movie was done quite often in the late 90's, with `End of Days,' `The Minion,' and this one coming out within several months of each other. In those three, `End of Days' is the one to see, with this one edging out the dull Dolph Lundgren flick.The Bad News: This movie was way too short! I own full CD's that are longer than this movie. That's an embarrassment right there. There is also no suspense whatsoever. There were plenty of opportunities to provide some cheap thrills the way other Full Moon type films do. Instead, this film relies on having some supposedly scary demon with glowing eyes popping up sometime to kill people for a sacrificial ritual to give you scares. He never did, and his presence only made me yawn when he was on-screen. His power was entirely laughable, simply sticking his hand inside your body and pulling out your heart in one piece. Creative, but not effective. That statement could also describe this movie as a whole. I try to provide something positive about every film I review, and here I have by saying that it was creative. Unfortunately, that doesn't appeal only to the acting. Here, it is simply atrocious. It is so wooden and unemotional that High School drama plays have been livelier. No one seems capable of giving the film any energy, as it meanders on from one scene to the next. It misses several great opportunities to be a great film that another rewrite or ten on the script could have chiseled a great film out of this.The Final Verdict: While not one of the worst horror films ever made, `Talisman' is no classic either. There are so many things that could have gone wrong that could have easily been fixed by putting more heart into it. The movie is best viewed when in the complete and total fix of alcoholic beverages and several friends to simply ridicule it to make it more enjoyable.Rated R: Violence and some language.