O pacto

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.

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.

Anyone who expected this movie to be an amazing, intelligent film will be severely disappointed. However, from the trailer, I made a guess as to the general quality of the film. I was right, and I enjoyed myself.

Hot guys who do magic. That's pretty much all you need to know about the movie. The dialogue is crap, most of the acting is so-so, characters are woefully underdeveloped, and the plot is flimsy at best. That said, it was a fun movie. There was exciting action, and lots of fan service for the girls in the audience (Don't worry boys, there are girls in dubious sleepwear, too) It's one of those movies where you sit and watch and say, "This is a really good idea, but even *I* could write a better movie than this." The concept is cool, the execution not-so-hot. But as a break from the grind of class? Definitely good.

The action was cool. The boys were pretty. And, really, what more does a girl need?

This movie is essentially for teenagers. The cool boys in the school meet the cool girls. The boys have supernatural powers and it's all about being in control and appealing to the opposite sex. The plot itself is fairly shallow and offers no twists or turns.

Unlike the movie "Underworld", this movie moves a little too slow and doesn't have anything interesting to offer other than some occasional special effects and some scantily clad actors. The girls run around in their underwear and the boys walk around in swim trunks.

The special effects and the display of the supernatural powers are very well done, but after awhile they evoke yawns, and not excitement. You can only slam people around so much before it quits adding to the plot. The movie fails at upping the ante. No matter how intense the action should feel, it all just looks like more of the same.

Strangely, the adults in this movie offer forth the worst acting. The younger actors do quite well and it is the story and overall plot which leaves the most to be desired.

The movie isn't bad, it just isn't good either.