From my favorite movies..

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

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.

OK, if you didn't find this movie downright hilarious and awesome, you are probably stoic and annoying. Your IQ is probably very low, because even my dog thought this movie rocked. It is not only funny, but it is clearly not mean tot be taken seriously. If the writer intended it to be serious... Then that's even funnier. Life just keeps getting better. Anyways, I recommend this movie to everyone. I saw it a long time ago it was so great. Man I can't wait to see it again. Apparently my comment must have 10 lines of text, so I will elaborate. A young woman and male find an awesome Talisman lying around. They then are embarked on a journey to stop the evil that was all along hidden within the talisman. There is betrayal, oh yes, and a school, oh yes, a private school. A private school with fabulous school uniforms. There is a guy who looks half-Asian. There is a hot teacher. The list doesn't end there. There is also the evil itself. Which is taking lives for it's plan of ultimate world demise. I suppose I have reached my ten lines of text. I will leave you with a few descriptive words that I would use to describe this movie:Awesome, Hilarious, Amusing, Entertaining, Not Scary, The opposite of Horror, Worth all the time I put into watching it, Worth the time I spent looking it up, Intuiging, Exciting, etc.

This is definitely not a bad movie despite what others think here. It's so short that if you have any preoccupation with boredom that is virtually destroyed. With that aside, what does this movie have to offer? It's not scary, unless you're under the age of the highest voting score here. If that really bothers you, then you might think of each villainous scene as cheesy.This is essentially a mystery draped in the occult. A similar story would be The Ninth Gate. This is probably the kind of movie you watch in the middle of the night during October (while you're in the Halloween mood). It might bug you out more if you are half asleep, because you may have difficulty distinguishing between the dream and real sequences, and finally the last 10 minutes could be a little disturbing too.The premise starts with a young man beginning class at an expensive international school for delinquents, and he also suffers from ominous nightmares. The flick doesn't waste too much time presenting the enigmatic main character (why is he attending this school, and what of these dreams?), and introducing an intriguing antagonist(why is he picking off people for?). Therefore, I find it hard to believe someone will have a hard time sitting through this, unless they don't like horror movies (there are supernatural evil doers), they've seen some think like it already (which I cannot come up with), or it isn't that flashy for them (this movie isn't out to dazzle you with special effects or cunning murder scenes, but it does have some respectable twists).

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