(Vintage FIlm Reviews) - The Covenant

This is a film brought to you by, Renny Harlin. The same guy responsible for a number of successful and non-successful films over the years such as, A Nightmare On Elm Street. 4, Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea and a few more.

I personally believe his work isn't that bad, viewable and entertaining, as most of the films I mentioned, I own and are decent films.

The Covenant is about 5 families that settled in the Ipswich colony of Massachusetts, in 1692 around the same time as the Salem Witch Trials. The families form a covenant of silence and were to never reveal their powers in public. However, one family had a desire and lust for more, so they were banished - their bloodline disappeared without a trace.

Over the years until now, the Covenant is now bound by the 4 Son's of Ipswich who are decedents of the families that moved to Ipswich in the late 1600s. They possess great supernatural powers, by right of their heritage and they are all students.

The problems they face with their Supernatural powers are, every time you use it, it gets more and more addictive. Kind of like, Crack. When they turn 18, they 'ascend' and their powers become much stronger meaning, once they are already 'addicted' they can abuse their power in which will be less controllable and in turn, in the long run, drain their youth and have them aging prematurely.

This film has good points and bad points.

The storyline could have been stronger. I felt some things in the film were to 'bait' or didn't add up.
The acting was fine and done very well by the 4 "brothers". Each character represented their role well as to how their personalities differ and how they clash with one another.
The special effects was brilliant and there was one bit with a Ford Mustang crashing into a trucking carrying tree-logs and upon impact, the car dissembles into bits around the truck then reassembles behind the truck all in one peace. My jaw was left open for a while.

Other than that really, the film was entertaining to watch, somewhat frightful as well, such as the spider scene (if you don’t like spiders, this scene will have you cringing) and the ending could have been worked on a touch more. There were some grimey fights, but it very much came across like Street Fighter II (the game) hyper special edition or whatever and at certain times I was just waiting for the 'Shouryuu Reppa' (dragon punch) or the 4 ‘Sons of Ipswich’ to breakout into a song, because for some reason, seeing the 4 of them altogether, they reminded me of the Backstreet Boys or some boy band.

Overall, this film gets a 7/10. Only for the quality of 3 scenes among the other tiny little bits that make up the film as well. The Mustang scene, The Spiders scene & The Dorm Room Deception part. Oh, and for the line where Sebastian Stan as Chase Collins asks Steven Strait as Caleb Danvers to be his ‘Wiatch’ (Replace the ‘W’ with a ‘B’ if you don’t understand). If those Bits weren't in the film, it would have received a 4 if that.

10th December 2006