The Covenant (2006) (PG-13) ★½

Review Date: September 10th, 2006

If you're a teen looking for scantily clad supermodel types doing R-rated things in a PG-13 movie, you've come to the right “supernatural” flick. Otherwise, you’re gonna wanna head to The Illusionist.

Story

Following a brief history lesson and one of the most asinine opening sequences in recent movie history, it becomes apparent that four friends--Caleb (Steven Strait), Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Reid (Toby Hemingway) and Tyler (Chace Crawford)--possess superhuman powers. In fact, the four share an unbreakable bond: Direct descendants of the original settlers of Ipswich Colony during the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, they all inherited their ancestors’ supernatural powers. When they turn 18, they “ascend,” gaining even more potent--but addictive--powers. With Caleb’s 18th just days away, his mother (Wendy Crewson) worries about him because each time a magical power is put to use, the user ages prematurely, and the powers are addictive. But with his girlfriend (Laura Ramsey) in grave danger and an outsider (Sebastian Stan) threatening to infringe on the group’s sacred name and ancestry, will Caleb be able to resist?

Acting

Well, it’s official: If you want to break into acting, looks are everything. If you look fresh out of the pages of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, you can act--even if you can’t act! The guys in The Covenant might not be quite that bad, but the acting’s just not pretty, especially compared to these dudes (it’s a backhanded compliment!). Strait (Undiscovered), Covenant’s resident movie veteran with five films under his belt, absolutely has enough Abercrombie in him to warrant infinite chances to get it right, but he makes Keanu Reeves look like Robin Williams--or a snail like a cheetah. The rest of the actors tend to overact where Strait underacts. Kitsch, a bottle beefcake with one hell of an ironic last name, and Hemingway (an equally ironic last name) both seem to think they’re in some throwaway teen horror flick instead of a throwaway supernatural thriller. And the other relative newcomer, Stan, comes close to decency but undoes his good towards the end.

Direction

Uwe Boll gets a lot of flak for his films, but how ‘bout throwing some hate Renny Harlin’s way?! Harlin has the ability to be a good director--as evidenced on Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger--but that ability has been M.I.A. for over a decade. Fresh off 2004’s clunkeriffic duo of Exorcist: The Beginning and Mindhunters (the latter not being released until last year), Harlin has unfortunately added to his canon o’ crap with The Covenant. Though not nearly as much his fault as it is the actors’, the film remains a directorial mess, no thanks to the muddled script from The Forsaken writer J.S. Cardone. Despite the characters trying to spell the story out for us, it’s still somewhat hazy, and its brief moments of clarity provide little to enjoy. Nice cinematography allows for scarce fun, but such scenes turn the movie into an underwhelming Matrix/Underworld hybrid in place of an actual mystery. All in all, some teenagers might appreciate the thrills and the loud music, but fans of the occult surely won’t.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 1 1/2 stars.