THE COVENANT

Four students from the prestigious Spencer Academy are actually the descendants of four powerful magical families who made a non-aggression alliance in the 1600s. A fifth family of sorcerers, however, was exiled, and their descendants were lost. The four boys, known as the Sons of Ipswich, use their powers for trivial teenage pranks until one day, a mysterious murder in the woods near the campus makes them suspect that the descendant of the fifth family has returned and intends to eliminate the four boys to absorb their power. It is very rare to come across a film as bad as "The Covenant," a badness that is second only to the works of Uwe Boll or the infamous amateur productions distributed by Pinocci. The fundamental problem with "The Covenant" lies mainly in the subject matter, a story of sorcerers and magic structured as a teen movie; a subject that, in itself, manages to arouse rare interest, but then, combined with the chaos of complacent ugliness that tints the entire work, it ends up descending into the vast universe of pointless trash. As early as 1996, Andrew Fleming had attempted the path of the sorcerous teen movie with "The Craft" and, although the result was certainly not a masterpiece, the final product was not entirely bad, thanks to an interesting cast and an unusual care in the characterization of the characters. "The Covenant" starts with similar premises, only to plunge into narrative banality and spectacular monotony. It begins with an explicit reference to "Lost Boys," which, at first glance, might even seem fascinating, but then it immediately descends into showing boys who dress coolly and behave coolly and have facial expressions not unlike jaw paralysis; the viewer who does not dress coolly and does not behave coolly, hopes with all their heart that these are not the protagonists of the film and instead will find themselves staring at the same expressionless faces for more than 90 minutes. Overlooking the inept and ridiculous protagonists who seem recruited from the ranks of a suburban boy band, it is truly impossible to save a film that builds its screenplay on nothing: an hour and a half of going in circles, with these boys talking about who knows what, furrowing their brows and pursing their lips, showing off shirtless in shocking and endless dialogues in the school locker rooms. From a plot that would like to seem complicated and instead becomes banalized with each passing minute, a script is pulled out that seems to have been written for a pilot episode of a non-existent TV series; there is even the intention to create a plot twist by keeping the identity of the enemy family member a secret, but the solution is so obvious that it almost seems offensive to the viewer's intelligence (there are five main actors, four are the members of the Ipswich families, who knows who the fifth mysterious one will be?). But the real coup de grace is represented by the last ten minutes of the film. After endless dialogues and pop star moves from the protagonists that the viewer has had to endure for 80 minutes and after the revelation of the "unsuspecting" evil sorcerer, we reach the much longed-for final showdown that, listen up, is resolved with ridiculous "energy waves" from a Japanese cartoon, fluttering in young Clark Kent style, mid-air pirouettes, and a few lightning bolts thrown right and left. In short, one of those scenes that if told can seem absurd, in person can only appear ridiculous. It is a shame to see at the helm of this cinematic abomination an honest action movie craftsman like Renny Harlin who, after the heyday in the early '90s of blockbusters like "Cliffhanger" or "Die Hard 2," dedicated himself to modest but not despicable high-budget horror films on commission like "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Exorcist: Genesis," only to end up in what can be considered a film to be ashamed of. A carefully crafted and suggestive photography and a few good digital special effects do little to help; "The Covenant" is and will probably remain for a long time, one of the ugliest and most irritating genre films of recent years.