Le pacte du sang

When watching the new Renny Harlin flick "The Covenant", one has to ask themselves "Am I at a movie theatre, or did I just turn on the Saturday Night Sci-Fi Channel movie?" Ipswitch, Mass. was founded in the 1600's by five families who fled England because of their mystical pagan powers. The Putman's were thought to have been killed off in during the Salem witch trials. Now, in 2006, the four male descendents of the remaining families are developing their magical powers, with the leader, Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait), reaching the full maturation of his powers on his 18th birthday. The families formed this covenant to keep each other in check, as the powers drain the life force of those using it. The long lost heir of the Putman family comes back into town to take all the powers for himself.

I found three metaphors in the film: puberty (get the powers at 13 years old, with full maturation at 18), drugs (the powers are addicting and slowly kill you) and to a lesser extent homosexuality ("my adoptive father caught me using magic when I was 15, and we kept it quiet"). All three were obvious, yet an attempt was still made to obscure them.

The lore and mythology was presented in an un-convoluted way. It's easy to follow and straightforward. So there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's just simplistic and derivative, with nothing to really get excited about. You could almost figure it out without having even seen the movie.

Harlin seems to have taken a cue from MTV in making this film, adopting the philosophy of "Laguna Beach" that everyone in your high school just got back from a Teen People photo shoot. He must have cast models, as there isn't a shred of acting talent in the entire young cast. At the end of the film I was wondering if I had seen a film comprised entirely of cut footage and rehearsal shots. I was left with the distinct impression that just off camera was a stagehand holding a stack of cue cards for the cast to read from.

And the camera work was straight out of the late 80's to early 90's music video library. Half of it looked like a schlock Ozzy Osbourne video, the other half resembled Madonna's "Like a Prayer." This kind of film-making is completely unappealing. I understand that the core audience is probably 13-18 year old girls, and they most likely find that sort of film-making wondrous and spellbinding. Unfortunately for Harlin, and myself, 13-18 year old girls aren't the only ones who see films. There's a whole world of intense film-making techniques out there that would have made this film more enjoyable and pleasing to the eye. I know. I've seen it. Many have developed and mastered these techniques. But Harlin, no matter how much of a seasoned veteran he is, is making mistakes and "artistic choices" that reek of rookie director.

Not to mention the end fight scene seemed taken punch for punch from the Saruman/Gandalf fight in "Lord of the Rings" or Harry/Voldemort fight in "Harry Potter". I could go on and on about how this reeks of un-originality: "The Craft" with dudes or "The Lost Boys" with witches.

The idea of the movie was better than the movie itself, I thought. It did have potential, but didn't really embrace it as much as it should have. Basically, it's about four warlocks who are descent from four families from the 17th century who were able to harness the power of witchcraft. But when a fifth one shows up, stronger than all of them and seeking the power of the others, they must stop him before he kills them and everyone they care about. Think Underworld meets Highlander, and that's the basic mood of the movie. It's easy to think of this as an Underworld knock off, but it was actually better than that. The plot is predictable, and drags at times, and there is almost no character development. A lot of interesting subplots are touched upon, but never really explored, and the way they ended it, they obviously want sequels. Check it out, there's some pretty cool action scenes and an interesting story to back it up, but don't count on being blown away.

This is like the definition of a guilty pleasure movie. I know it's bad. Bad acting, bad graphics, the story is pure and total nonsense. There's nothing here worth the time and yet I weirdly enjoy the awfulness.

Don't watch this. There's really no reason to at all. The fact that I weirdly like it is a definite anomaly. If it happens to be on cable, sure, maybe, you have literally nothing to loose.

In 1692, in the Ipswich Colony of Massachusetts, five families of powerful witches commit to a covenant of silence to protect themselves against the witch hunters, but one of the families transgress their pact and is banished from their lands. Along the centuries, the power and the covenant are transmitted through their descendants and when the eldest son is eighteen years old, he ascends to a higher power. However, the use of magic addicts and if used in excess, ages the warlock. In the present days, four wizards teenage friends are in high school and their leader Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait) is close to his eighteenth birthday and consequently to ascend. He has just met Sarah Wenham (Laura Ramsey) and they are dating, when the appearance of darkling and supernatural dreams haunt the group. Sooner they find an evil warlock, descendant of the fifth ancient family that wants to strip Caleb's power.

I liked "The Covenant", a supernatural teenager movie in the style of "Angel", Buffy", "Charmed" or "Supernatural". This film has good special effects, but the story and characters are not well-developed and some lines are terrible. The acting is only reasonable, but Laura Ramsey is extremely beautiful and natural in her great performance, and I liked this unknown actress. In the end, I found "The Covenant" very entertaining, but could be better and better with minor improvements in the screenplay. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Pacto" ("The Covenant")

Basic summary: Ipswitch used to be a community of witches and escaped the Salem witch hunts by forming a covenant of secrecy. The first born males descended from these families have supernatural powers, and must come to terms with the seductive, addictive nature of using those powers.

Well, I usually give movies the benefit of the doubt and start from a 5, going from there:

Production: -1 for very obvious audio out of sync, +1 for nicely done special effects, the darkling actually gave me chills, +0.5 for nice colorization (I like the dull blue), -0.5 for the stupid sound track, +0.5 for the opening sequence -- I'm a sucker for stylish compositing and flashy title design.

Story / Script: +1 for decent main idea, -0.5 for DBZ/Matrix/Street Fighter ripoff/pastiche, -1 for not explaining some plot threads very well (spiders, darkling), -1 for boring, predictable ending, -1 for gratuitous exposition, both as words on the screen and as bland monologuing

Acting / Characterization: -0.5 for bad bad acting, although it gets a little better as the film progresses, -1 for lack of character development, especially among all the females

Other: +1 for gratuitous male and female nudity, which is fun to watch, and +0.5 for no sex scenes, which for this genre are usually done very badly and end up being boring rather than hot, +1 for hitting its target audience, teenage sci-fi/horror/thriller fans, even though this movie is not exclusively any of those genres.

Conclusion: This is not a "film," this is a MOVIE. There's really nothing to analyze, it's just good, (relatively) clean fun. Lots of really attractive actors and actresses. Lots of boys fighting in the style of DBZ and Street Fighter. If you like cute actors and actresses, supernatural special effects, and/or mindlessly fun plots, this movie is for you. If you prefer Oscar-worthy, exquisitely-produced film masterpieces with tons of multi-layered, allegorical plot threads and groundbreaking visualization techniques, you probably won't like this film.

Using my twisted logic, this movie gets a 4/10.