Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman review.
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman is now available on VOD. It wasn’t what I thought it was.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman
Directed by Kim Seong-sik
Written by Park Joong-seop
Starring Gang Dong-won, Huh Joon-ho, Esom, Lee Dong-hwi, Lee Jeong-eun, Park Jeong-min, Kim Jisoo and Kim Jong-soo
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman Review
It’s (almost) always fun to go into a movie with no idea what it’s about. Sure, sometimes you get stuck with a boring one…but true blind watches allow stories to unfold with no expectations. I walked into Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman having never seen a trailer…or even hearing the title before. This is my way of telling you to stop reading this review and go watch the movie. It’s not “great” …but it is interesting. A good kind of interesting. Watching the story slowly reveal itself is one of the highlights of experiencing it. If you already know where it’s going…that part is gone. New movie reviews avoid spoilers as much as possible. That becomes difficult when the entire genre of a movie is kept hidden. That was the last warning.
Let’s take a look at a plot summary for Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman that you’ll find on Rotten Tomatoes:
“Despite being the grandson of a famed village shaman, Dr. Cheon doesn’t actually believe in ghosts, yet makes a living performing fake exorcisms on camera. But when a mysterious client arrives at his door, Dr. Cheon is drawn into a series of strange and unexplainable events that will challenge everything he has ever believed–and resurface childhood horrors he’s tried to forget.”
That sounds like a horror movie. It sounds like the plot of The Last Exorcism. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes can’t quite land on a genre for it. The former lists “Crime, Fantasy, Horror and Mystery”. The latter goes with “Fantasy, Mystery & Thriller”. Those cover a lot…but so does Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman. When it begins it feels like a dark comedy. Horror elements pop up when Dr. Cheon meets a girl who is possessed. Unlike his fake line of work…she’s really possessed. Just when you think you’ve got your head around what the movie is going to be…it pulls the rug out from under you completely.
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman is surprising right from the start. Dr. Cheon (Gang Dong-won) and his assistant In-bae (Lee Dong-hwi) pull up to a house to perform one of their fake exorcisms. The street looks familiar. They walk up to the house and…well…it looks familiar too. When the couple who live there open the door it becomes clear what is happening here. The couple is played by the same actors who played the original housekeeper and her hidden husband in Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece Parasite. They aren’t playing the same characters…but the message is clear. Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman is going to be a fun movie.
Yoo-kyung’s (Esom) hires Dr. Cheon. Her sister Yoo-min (Park So-yi) needs his help. Dr. Cheon is about to see a genuine possession case. It appears the story is going to be one about a con artist thrust into a genuine life and death situation. In a way…it is that. But not in any way that you expect it to be. Yoo-kyung can see the mystical realm. She can spot ghosts. She sees what is possessing Yoo-min. Only…she isn’t seeing a ghost. She’s seeing something much different. A mage is possessing the people around Yoo-kyung. And he’s coming for her eyes.
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman only gives you a few moments to process the shift in genre before it triples down on it. The mage connects to Dr. Cheon’s past. The movie unleashes a lot of lore and backstory about shaman’s and broken swords and talismans. It becomes a full-on mystical adventure movie. A story about good vs. evil. A generational revenge tale. Dr. Cheon isn’t quite the grifter we’ve been led to believe. He run from is destiny…but he understands his place in it.
The mage is suitably evil. He can possess people through dark magic involving severed fingers in bamboo tubes. When Dr. Cheon uses his broken sword to bash a possessed person…the bamboo tube shatters. We see how the mage collects his fingers. He jumps from person to person in some thrilling chase/fight scenes. When he abducts Yoo-min…an inevitable showdown is obviously on the horizon. There’s a lot of lore and adventure to get to between the two points, however.
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman is a consistently interesting movie. It has a sense of fun that morphs into a more serious tone as the story dictates. There is a lot more to it than marketing would lead you to believe. The less you know about it…the better. If you’ve read to this point…well…it’s still an interesting movie full of strong characters and a large sense of scope. I’m not sure it completely sticks the landing. The good news is that the journey there is worth taking.
Scare Value
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman has bigger aspirations than the plot summaries you’ll find online would have you believe. It becomes more of an adventure movie than you’d expect…though the Indiana Jones-like title probably should have been a clue. When the true story finally reveals itself…there is a lot to it. An interesting movie.
3/5
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from VUDU
Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon
