The Covenant

I was in the mood to rent movies when I got back from the holidays, and I was mildly interested in seeing The Covenant. I like the supernatural stuff, and it had cute boys in it, so that was a plus as well.

Overall, it wasn't as horribly cheesy as I expected it to be. The special effects were great. There wasn't any point in the movie where I felt the effects felt too staged, even during the big fight scenes at the end of the movie.

The main premise of the movie is that there were five families in Ipswich that had powers and one of the families supposedly was killed off in the Salem Witch Trials. The remaining four formed a covenant of silence to keep themselves from being "outed." The thing about the magic is that it's apparently very seductive and addicting and the more the guys use it, the more their bodies start to decompose. OK, decompose probably isn't the correct word, but their bodies start to break down. Moreover, at the age of 18, these teens "ascend" and gain greater powers than they have during their early teen years.

The first half of the movie introduces us to these four teens that are the ones with the powers. Then in the second half of the movie we discover that the fifth family wasn't killed off and the teen just happens to be going to the same prep school that the other teens are because he wants to get the powers from the other teens and become an uber-warlock.

These two halves of the movie seem a bit disjointed to me, though. Granted, I knew the basic story before seeing the movie, so I was somewhat able to reconcile the discrepancy. I did think when starting the movie that it was only going to be about the new teen fighting against the covenant and that would be it. Not that it was bad to have part of the movie be about introducing characters and what they can do, but it seemed a bit frivolous to me.

I also didn't like how the movie just started to focus on the oldest of the four guys in the covenant. I had figured it would be more about the group as a whole instead of just about one main guy. Not only that, but all four of the guys in the covenant were only really distinguishable by how they looked. They didn't have much in the way of characterization. Of course, most people don't watch this kind of movie for great characters. Still, I would have liked to have seen more differences between the four guys.

The battle scene at the end between Caleb (the main good guy) and Chase (the evil guy) was very predictable, too. The fight was going Chase's way until Caleb ascended. Then the fight turned toward the good guy's favor and Caleb eventually "won." I put that in quotes because Chase was blown away by an energy ball back into the barn where they were fighting, which was burning to the ground. As in most supernatural movies, the bad guy was nowhere to be found when all was said and done, setting up a sequel to the movie.

Even though the movie was disjointed and seemed to be missing large chunks of story, I'd actually be willing to see a sequel if it were to come out, just because I'm kind of fascinated by what story I did see and where the characters could go. I'd also like to see if all the guys in the covenant can control their powers without becoming addicted. It could be very interesting.

Overall, I'd say that if you don't really like supernatural movies and/or are very nitpicky about plot points, you shouldn't see this movie. However, if you're looking for something relatively mindless to watch with some fabulous eye candy, I'd recommend it.