The Covenant 2006
A film review by Timothy Voon Copyright 2006 Timothy Voon
2 out of 5 stars
Director: Renny Harlin Producer: J.S. Cardone, Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg Screenwriter: J.S. Cardone Stars: Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, Laura Ramsey, Taylor Kitsch, Toby Hemingway, Jessica Lucas, Chace Crawford, Wendy Crewson
The Covenant started out promisingly enough, but like a lot of movies of this genre, slowly deteriorates into a pudge of spoofy special effects as kids blast each other with energy balls and ends with a lot of unnecessary body flinging through walls and loud explosions.
The premise for this movie lies within the myth of the 'Witches of Ipswich'. There are four boys in town who are known as the 'Sons of Ipswich'. They are each the eldest sons of four families who have descended from a clan off witches who escaped the Inquisitions of France and England in the mid 17th century by escaping to America. Their introduction, throwing themselves of a foggy cliff in a display of their warlock powers was thrilling to start with. But the imagination starts to get a little stretched and strained as the unbelievable becomes truly unbelievable - flying cars, flying objects, flying bodies.
The story revolves around a tussle of power between a descendant of the fifth Ipswich family and the other four. The fifth family line supposedly ended in the Salem burnings a few centuries earlier, when the covenant of silence was broken and the fifth was burned at the stake for his evil deeds. However, a bastard son existed to seed a lineage that survives to this day and he has returned to gain revenge on the other four.
Renny Harlin has churned out another conventional special effects flick that has a little more heart than an exploding bomb. The suspense relies on dark foggy exteriors, exploding light bulbs, and loud noises. After awhile of sitting in the already dark cinema, you kinda develop a night vision that sees through the thin veneer of cheap tricks used to startle you. The cast is full of 'pretty' new faces that do not cut or bruise with flying glass or kicks, only lends itself to the final conclusion that is utter disbelief.
Timothy Voon
Email - winklebeck@hotmail.com Web - http://us.imdb.com/ReviewsBy?Tim+Voon
-- rec-arts-movies-reviews@robomod.net mailing list http://www.robomod.net/mailman/listinfo/rec-arts-movies-reviews
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews