The Covenant [DVD] [2007]

I love how evenly reviews for this movie are spread - half for and half against, with just one 3 star rating in the middle. Therefore I've decided to tip the scale and say - 4 stars - because I enjoyed it.

Okay, the plot is (at best) basic and (at worst) times confusing and I wont confess to having understood all the dialogue however it had some great set pieces (like a car that breaks apart and then reforms to avoid a collision and the battle sequence at the end, where the two guys 'magic battle').

I thought it was fun to have a male-spin on 'The Craft' (which 'The Covenant' shares alot of similarities with) and the fact that these four buff guys call themselves witches was a fun twist. The Covenant lads are also 'One Tree Hill' hot and the several swim team scenes added nothing to the story but allowed these wideboys to strip down to their trunks and stand around looking at each other (any excuse, eh?).

This is a film where the special effects cost more than the cast and I don't mind that. If you want a hunkier Harry Potter, or a gay 'Craft', or you're just happy watching anything, then you cannot go wrong with 'The Covenant' - sexy-bad-boy-buff-fluff-magic-nonsense is always a winner with me!

Just consider it a male version of "The Craft" -- "The Covenant" is basically a flimsy witchcraft story dressed up with lots of male eye candy. The candy is nice for the eyes, but it would have been nice to have a little meat for the brain as well.

Ipswich has four (used to be five) witch families, and the eldest son inherits a dangerous bunch of magic in his early teens, before coming into his full power at eighteen (do I smell another magic/sexual maturity analogy here?). They mainly use these powers as... well, the way you'd expect any teen boys to. But then the body of a student is found in a car, and the sons of Ipswich are suspected.

And Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait) starts to figure out that something weird is happening -- ghosts, magical peeping-toms, and a mysterious student who just transferred there. Not only must Caleb stop the magical attacks -- but keep his own burgeoning powers under control too, as he confronts the secret enemy.

"The Covenant" is pure fluff from start to finish, and at times it feels like it isn't aspiring to be much more -- the plot is quite basic and rather suspenseless, since the bad guy practically has a "REALLY SINISTER AND CREEPY" sign around his neck -- and a five-year-old could guess who he is just by the backstory.

In a way, it feels bad to kick such an unpretentiously popcorn movie, but it could have been way better -- instead, it's loaded with with cliches galore. There are a few cool scenes, such as a car flying apart and reconstructing -- quite nice, visually speaking.

But the rest of the time, it's just predictable and rather cheesy -- dialogue is extremely teen-movie ("You ready to say "uncle"?" "I'm ready for you to go to hell!"), and the climax is like a magic-powerball-throwing fight from a bad children's anime.

The actors are there basically for the looks, and they form a pretty typical circle -- good boy, shy boy, bad boy, and mischief-maker. Not great acting, but most of them won't make you openly cringe. And of course, they toss in some teen-movie starlets, who don't really register, as the token girlfriends.

"The Covenant" is pure popcorn, with a load of cliches -- might be fun for a watch after two A.M., when nothing else is on. During daylight, there are countless better things on.

The Story: In 1692, five families in the Ipswich colony of Massachusetts hold a mysterious power that they are forced to hide from society for fear of being executed of witches. To hide themselves, they form a secret Covenant which will help protect their ancestors from being hunted down.
Fast forward to the present day and four teenagers are forced to live in the modern day with these powers, though they can't resist the temptation of using them now and again. Caleb Danvers is coming up to his 18th Birthday and will thus ascend to the next level of this mysterious power, although a mysterious 5th power is seeking to destroy Caleb and take it from him.

The Review: This was a surprisingly entertaining film which, for the teenage movie genre was very unique. The friendship between the four boys, and the development of the relationship between Caleb (Strait) and Sarah (Ramsey) are in my eyes very believable which leads you into caring for these characters on another level. Being of the story behind this movie and the overall format, I felt that the director was trying way too hard to bring up the age rating by adding some random pointless nudity and language in an attempt to have it appeal to an older audience. The scene transition I felt didn't work as well as I'd hoped, some scenes will feature some really cool and memorable moments, e.g. the scene where Caleb is driving and he hits an 18 wheeler head on. This type of scene would have you think this is worthy of a 5 star rating but then the next scene would contain some extremely corny dialogue which will make you want to bury your head in your hands in shame.

Overall this is an entertaining film that you will enjoy as long as you're not expecting to see a movie with a 5 star script and 5 star acting.