Monday, September 25, 2006
Shaun and I saw The Covenant this weekend. It was okay. We rated it a 6.5/10.

Three upsides: decent special effects, an okay (but very predictable) storyline, and some cool abilities by the "magical" characters. The music was also pretty good, and the intro credits montage was set to an awesome remix of White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" which totally fit the theme. In fact, once I finish writing this I'm going to go try to download it.
Three downsides:
  • There were lots of potential story hooks that went nowhere (a semi-antagonist jealous boyfriend was a major character in the first third of the movie but then didn't appear after that; one of the four main characters was a hothead who clashed with the main guy, but the hothead ended up doing shit all when it got to the actual meat of the story.

  • The final battle was extremely bland, considering what they could have done with it. Two guys fighting have crazy magical powers that include being able to make cars magically start, teleporting an SUV full of people around, jumping from great heights, inducing vomiting in other people, and casting magic spells and curses. So what do they do? Throw spheres of 'force' or air or something at each other. Over and over again.

  • They just plain didn't EXPLAIN some things. In probably the coolest scene (if you've seen the trailer, it's when the car hits the semi and magically reforms behind it) the main guy sees some freaky ghost, and calls his friend and says he just saw a "darkling." Okay, so what is a darkling? Good question, but annoyingly one that never gets answered.
Not a terrible movie, but not a great one either.

IF YOU LIKED THE COVENANT, YOU'D PROBABLY ALSO LIKE:
- X2
- The Craft
- Underworld

There was also a trailer for quite possibly the worst looking movie ever, Stomp The Yard. It's like Bring It On, except instead of hot cheerleaders you have young gangsta kids. And instead of coordinated cheerleading/dancing, they...stomp dance, means hopping around and stomping. Seriously.

This looks so awful. It's got the whole "bad kid trying to improve himself" theme, the "new talented kid joins the team, who desperately needs him" theme, the "rival teams meet at the nationals" theme (which should really only be found in college sports movies, and "stomping" is no freaking sport), and the gangsta theme. It's like Bring It On meets Gridiron Gang meets Step Up, except I would rather watch a marathon of those movies for an entire day than watch Stomp The Yard ONCE.

The Prestige, however, continues to look very sweet. Can't wait to see that one, though I continue to mix it up with The Illusionist.


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