Movies this bad don’t happen by accident. Careful planning, time and dedication is required to waste millions of dollars and two whole hours of an audiences time. I mean, first you have to call up your buddy at the sci-fi network and ask him to send you a box of rejected scripts for pilots, then you have to convince someone to give you the money to make it, then you’ve got to somehow convince the actors that this won’t kill their careers. That’s a lot of hard work. And for that effort, and that effort alone, I applaud the makers of the Covenant.
This is B-movie crap to the Nth degree. A sad, pathetic wankfest for gay 13 year old gothkids. Good thing they’ve already got trench coats. Somewhere along the line the makers of Underworld got together with a couple direct to video film makers and said “Hey, why don’t we make something loud, pretty and incomprehensible? You know, something the emo kids would LOVE. I mean, how cool would it be if we crossed The Lost Boys with The Craft and gave it that Underworld edge?” Not cool at all, I’m afraid. At least, not if you take it seriously.
The film opens with White Zombie’s “More Human than Human”, which really sets the tone for the whole film. That is to say that it could have been cool 10 years ago, but now it’s just tired. The entire film plays out like it was written by someone who spent WAY too much time in the 90’s playing Vampire: The Masquerade while listening to Morrissey albums. It’s no surprise that the writer behind this is the brilliant mind that brought us Sniper 3, The Forsaken and last years Wesley Snipes direct-to-video Magnum Opus The Marksman. This is a guy that only Vern could go “Oh, you mean J.S. Cardone.” And who better to direct the work of such a pedigreed writer than Renny Harlin, a man who hasn’t made a watchable film since the 90’s.
The Covenant has more gaping holes than the bathtub girl at a frat party. First of all, it’s about a group of boys from four different families (but all the exact same age) who possess unbelievable powers that allow them to reconstruct reality and belong to a society so secret, so hush hush, that in order to learn anything about them, you have to check out a book from the school library. And they all go to a school that is apparently so selective that their school records include all the newspaper clippings, adoption papers and family histories necessary to fill in every last bit of exposition you need to get the plot going again. And when you can’t get the plot going that way, all we need is someone to go home so their mother can explain everything the audience needs to know in one easy monologue.
Then there’s this whole thing with these ghosts called ‘darklings’ that show up out of the blue for no apparent reason other than to make the film creepy for half a second. The best the movie can explain them is that it’s how witches fuck with one another. Like “HAHA! Scared you with the ghost of the guy I killed, didn’t I? LOL!” It’s text messaging with the dead. And frankly, dumb as shit.
Yes, friends, this movie is epic. At first it comes across as both terrible and terribly boring, but then it gets…crazy. Crazy funny. In fact, I would hazard to say that this is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year. When naked young men aren’t busy leaning against locker room walls casually talking, their girlfriends are sitting around in their dorm rooms in sexy lingerie talking about boys. And then someone actually has the balls to say “I’m gonna make you my Wi-otch!” That was the point I lost it. I couldn’t hold back anymore. What began as casual giggles turned into full blown laughter. I laughed myself sick through the rest of the film.
The climax alone is a stunner. I mean, they spend the whole film building up to this massive fight, showing us the incredible powers these “witches” possess (Rebuilding exploding cars, leaping 1000 feet to the beach below (because the makers of Underworld believe that every supernatural creature should have the ability to do this, because it’s COOL…and no, hasn’t been done like a thousand times now), magically having their car appear on the bottom with them when they do jump, slamming people around like rag dolls and simply killing people with a thought. And if that weren’t enough, the movie tells us TIME AND AGAIN that this is just the beginning – because on your 18th birthday, at precisely 11:12 p.m. (I’m guessing they mean Eastern Standard Time – which I believe both Network television and world altering magic are set to) you ‘Ascend’ getting almost Godlike powers. Sounds like it’s gonna be one hell of a final battle, huh? Especially since the fight starts at 11:10 p.m. Pretty fucking massive, right?
Um. No. Apparently, despite their immense power, when witches throw down, they do so by throwing translucent balls of CG at one another. One guy throws an energy ball. Then the other guy throws an energy ball. The guy left standing gets to pose and say something snarky about how powerful he is. This goes on for what seems to be a half hour. It’s like a fucking episode of Dragonball Z, without the scenes of people watching the fight on TV. That or they went to the Ken and Ryu school of Witchcraft. Ho-yudokin! Ho-Yudokin! But that ascension shit is pretty crazy, right? Nope. Apparently, when you ascend into your godlike powers, you just get to throw bigger and more powerful translucent balls of CG.
And when the barn they’re fighting in (which is dark and dank to hide the wires – the only feasible explanation for why they would meet in a fucking barn to have a fight in the first place) catches fire, they find it necessary to look scared and duck out of the way of falling timber…because they somehow don’t think to use their world altering powers to, you know, put the fire out or keep things from falling on them.
Films really don’t get much more retarded than this. However, if you have a thing for young men baring their asses or want to get REALLY drunk and watch something incredibly funny, then this is the movie for you. Probably this year’s most unintentionally funny film, this is something I highly recommend to you midnight movie buffs that seek out the worst of the worst. Complete with outrageous dialog (it bears repeating “I’m gonna make you my Wi-otch!”), wooden acting and unrepentantly silly logic, this movie is making me smile hours later. The most ri-god damned-diculous thing you’ll see in a long while.
Not recommended for anyone, ANYONE, who cannot appreciate a movie for how awe-inspiringly terrible it is. Anyone who was actually looking forward to this is about to be completely fucked out of 10 dollars.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
