Cleverly takes the lure of illegal drugs and links it to super powers.
The Covenant (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:69
Fresh:2
Rotten:67
Average Rating:2.8/10
Consensus: The Covenant plays out like a teen soap opera, full of pretty faces, wooden acting, laughable dialogue, and little suspense.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images, sexual content, partial nudity and language
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:Sep 8, 2006 Wide
Box Office: $23,292,105
Synopsis: Renny Harlin (DIE HARD 2, DEEP BLUE SEA) directs this supernatural thriller about descendants of powerful New England families. The sons of Ipswich are legendary at Spenser Academy, the local... Renny Harlin (DIE HARD 2, DEEP BLUE SEA) directs this supernatural thriller about descendants of powerful New England families. The sons of Ipswich are legendary at Spenser Academy, the local boarding school. Handsome and popular, these four teenage friends can trace their roots to the founding families of the Ipswich Colony, settled in the late 1600s. For years these Massachusetts families have harbored the secret that they possess supernatural powers. Their descendants--Caleb (Steven Strait), Reid (Toby Hemingway), Tyler (Chace Crawford), and Pogue (Taylor Kitsch)--have inherited magical powers that first manifested themselves when the boys turned 13 years old. In a nutshell, they can do anything. As they approach their 18th birthdays, they are preparing to "ascend," which means their powers will grow stronger. The downside? The magic is seductive and addictive, and causes premature aging with each use. Ringleader Caleb tries to keep his friends from using magic recklessly, but as the school year begins, strange events and a strong gut instinct convince Caleb that someone is using very powerful magic. Meanwhile, Caleb is exploring his newfound affection for transfer student Sarah (Laura Ramsey). To Caleb's dismay, Sarah becomes a pawn in a power struggle with a descendant of the fifth founding family of Ipswich, a line thought to be lost during Salem's witch trials. Is Caleb strong enough to maintain his power and keep his family and friends safe, or will he yield to this new threat and sacrifice himself? The film draws interesting parallels between the luring, addictive power of magic and the addictions real teenagers face. The sufficiently creepy setting echoes New England and sets the stage for supernatural phenomena. THE COVENANT also stars Sebastian Stan as Chase Collins, a wealthy newcomer to Spenser, and Jessica Lucas as Kate, Sarah's roommate and Pogue's girlfriend. [More]
Starring: Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Toby Hemingway, Chace Crawford
Starring: Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Toby Hemingway, Chace Crawford, Jessica Lucas, Laura Ramsey
Director: Renny Harlin
Director: Renny Harlin
Screenwriter: J.S. Cardone
Producer: Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Andre Lamal
Composer: Tomandandy
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Release:
Sep 2, 2008
Reviews for The Covenant
Utterly stupid and full of lazy plotting and lazier dialogue, this is just idiotic enough to entertain on nights when you want to give your brain a rest.
Daft but nonetheless enjoyable supernatural thriller, featuring some hilariously bad dialogue, impressive special effects and some genuinely creepy scenes.
Moviegoers need to band together for a covenant -- stop buying tickets to Renny Harlin movies.
This sort of thing might work as a desperation rental -- like if you've been injected with poison and must keep watching incredibly lame movies or die ...
There are worse things for a horror-thriller about supernatural high-schoolers to not be. Like not scary. Or not thrilling. Or not as entertaining as an episode of Charmed.
... this falls well short of the Buffy-level resonances at which [Harlin] was presumably aiming.
... one hopes, perhaps naively, that there’d be some kind of message amid the special effects and nubile bodies.
doesn't move in any direction and instead wanders without much aim at all
Essentially, Covenant is about young, wet, 'CW' ready underwear models running around hurling 'magical' gelatin blobs at each other while they compete for screen time with their own abs.
All that's truly scary about The Covenant are the words that appear before the title: 'A Renny Harlin Film.'
Director Renny Harlin ("The Long Kiss Goodnight") phones in this thoughtless teen horror flick from screenwriter J.S. Cardone ("The Forsaken").
More nonsensical than scary, THE COVENANT conjures a cautionary tale for prep school pretties.
The Covenant virtually resets the bar for mediocrity in horror thrillers.
The Covenant looks less like a movie and more like an extended boy band video -- and with about the same amount of depth.
The Covenant has excellent special effects (spiders and specters, oh my!), but it is strikingly lacking in suspense.
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