The CovenantRenny Harlin has taken a bunch of unknown, cookie cutter actors, a fairly small budget, and has made a very good looking movie with nice fight scenes, a couple of decent scares, and some VERY impressive special effects.
But as most of you know, it takes more then special effects to win me over. I might be cheap, but I ain't always easy. The background given on the Covenant was well presented and overall, you had a good script (usually) a well thought out plot and could have been a truly great movie.
The problem was, to me at least, the actors. As I said, they were cookie cutter images. The two main characters, Chase and Caleb were almost identical in some scenes. The only way to tell the difference was Chase had a zit on his chin. Then he didn't, then he did, then he didn't.
During the fight scenes at the end, I honestly wondered who was actually who.
What I did like was the interaction between Caleb and Laura. When was the last time you saw a teenage film where teens who were in love, or thought they were, just kissed and said goodnight? Well, kissed, kissed, kissed, and then one last kiss and said goodnight.
It was quite far from the graphic "lets just screw, it is only sex" of most of today's film. I guess the PG-13 had a lot to do with that. Personally I wish more studios would think about this. But, don't let the PG-13 scare you away. The special effects and story are winners.
Now, just what is
worse than four, rich, white, beautiful young men attending a posh New England
prep school and all blessed with ancestral warlock powers? Five of them! And
the fifth is insane. While the film has a 'war on drugs' addiction metaphor, the whole thing could have been an ABC after school special. Seems that the power these guys have comes to them on their 13th birthday as just a sample, a taste. They can do levitation, telekinesis and other types of magical stuff, but on their eighteenth birthday, they 'ascend' and gain pretty much the powers of a god.
Now, our hero Caleb is just a week shy of his eighteenth year when new comer to the school, Laura catches his eye and they start to date. But, also a newcomer is Chase, who is also a Warlock, but with even greater powers then the other boys because of his father.
The trouble is, no one told Chase about the side effects of his addiction to cocai..uhm.. Magic. Sorry. Anyway, it ages you much quicker. You literally die young.
To the depression of all the guys out there, no female T&A. There is male T&A and that so far seems to make all the girls I know just giggle in delight.
As the week passes, our villain terrifies the girls and stalks Caleb all the while building up his master plan. That is, he wants Caleb's power and will stop at nothing to gain it. But, unlike the others he knows about his powers and what they do, the whole fast aging thing.
That is where the Covenant ends, and what it comes down to. Bad guy forces good guy to fight after attacking good guys friends. He puts two of them in the hospital and curses the other one. And they fight each other, finally.
Now, does anyone remember Highlander? Where they had the 'Quickening" when one would kill the other, transferring all their power to the winner? Well, when someone is willed power in the Covenant, think "Quickening Light".
I expected to see something really amazing when this happened. Nope, what you get is two incredibly powerful kids who can topple mountains or make the ocean boil if they wanted to hitting each other with balls of like, like you might see in a Japanese anime film.
That's the big fight-scene, just two kids zapping each other. Actually, if I was watching an anime, that would have been fine, but as good as the story could have been and as good as the special effects had been, this was a cheap fight.
No, Covenant did not reinvent the horror movie. But maybe it did show that girls did not have to be sluts and not all guys are interested in getting in the panties of every girl they meet. It won't win many awards, but it is a pretty movie, with excellent FX. It's a good popcorn movie.
When Sci/Fi channel does stuff like this all anyone can do is gripe but they pay $9 to see it on the big screen.
Only one death of a character so minor it had no place in the film. No boobies and an ending designed for sequel, and a fairly lame (except for the special effects) ending battle.