| COLOSSAL YOUTH : Renny Harlin's 'The Covenant' [5/10] |
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| Tuesday, 19 December 2006 | |
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After the debacle of his involvement in the ill-fated Exorcist prequel, Harlin sensibly retreats to decidedly less ambitious, lower-profile terrain with The Covenant: an intermittently-diverting, unashamedly-derivative cross between The Craft (1996) and The Lost Boys (1987) that's functions primarily as a showcase for the upper lip, lower torso and left eyebrow of its hunksome young star Stephen Strait. As Caleb Danvers, Strait is one of four teenage warlocks directly descended from families who fled Europe's witch-hunting craze of the sixteenth century - the clans promptly resuming their pagan activities in the New World and. Hundreds of years later, the few surviving examples have become the Ipswich, Massachusetts equivalent of "old money" (the film is, oddly enough for an American movie, chiefly concerned with what's effectively an internecine feud among scions of the upper class.) Already blessed with flashy psychokinetic powers (not to mention gym-pumped physiques, chiselled features and perfect hair) the quartet - who all look around 25 - are, we're solemnly informed, fast approaching their eighteenth birthdays: at which time they will 'Ascend' to a higher level of supernatural power. But there's trouble on the horizon: the four increasingly sense the presence of a fifth warlock in their midst, wreaking homicidal havoc at the upscale college which the lads all attend... The Covenant is noisily preposterous from start to finish, so it's a blessing that - while never exactly played for laughs - the picture mostly doesn't take itself especially seriously. When informed that Caleb and company are collectively known as the 'Sons of Ipswich,' his admiring wannabe-girlfriend Sarah (a rather bland Laura Ramsey) dismissively comments that this makes them sound "like a boyband" - a comparison that also neatly fits the quartet's cheesecake looks. It's a line that could be charitably interpreted as hommaging a similar exchange in Dario Argento's 1980 Inferno ("Have you ever heard of the Three Sisters?" / "You mean those black singers") - that picture a sequel to what remains the only cinematic masterpiece about witchcraft in a school, Argento's own Suspiria (1975). Harlin's picture is, it goes without saying, a drastically more mundane affair than anything produced by Argento in his late-seventies prime. And even the thematic links are tenuous: despite the appearance of a 'Book of Damnation' in a cavernous room illuminated by flickering candles, it's actually debatable whether the goings-on The Covenant can accurately be described as 'witchcraft' at all. The powers wielded here by Strait and company (including Sebastian Stan, looking as if he's having an absolute ball as the bad-boy warlock) are strictly a matter of genetics rather than spell-casting, and the big pyrotechnic battles - participants hurl around globular masses of energy which resemble large, CGI water-bombs - owe less to Dennis Wheatley traditions and much more to similar stand-offs in the X-Men and Harry Potter movies. Indeed, scriptwriter J S Cardone makes no bones about such influences, having one of his warlocks yell that J K Rowling's boy-wizard can "kiss my ass" as he pilots his 4x4 over a cliff-edge and up into the sky. This priceless bit of dialogue pops up in the very first scene - and is easily the wittiest line in the whole screenplay. Likewise, the most inventive bit of visual business - a car-crash quite unlike anything yet committed to celluloid, and which should draw a chuckle from even the stoniest of audiences - comes disappointingly early on: it really is all downhill from there. Harlin may be a long way past his prime, but he still deserves a higher class of collaborator than the decidedly dodgy Cardone, whose work here is afflicted by the same faults which derailed his best-known picture as writer-director, namely 2001's desert-vampire B-movie The Forsaken*: once again, we get snarled up in 'half-baked mythology' delivered in the numerous chunks of awkward exposition, once again we're soon confused by the seemingly arbitrary 'rules' determining the characters' behaviour. Cardone's script for The Covenant makes some token stabs at topical Relevance: the fact that the psychokinetic powers are repeatedly described as "addictive," quickly turn their youthful practitioners into wizened oldsters, and that the powers' deployment is known as "Using," all adds up to a rather bald allegory for way college kids are seduced into the dark, dangerous, supposedly 'glamorous' world of drugs. Harlin and Cardone likewise amp up the homoerotic potential of the material, with the lads' adoring women almost invariably shunted off to the sidelines as the quartet compare delts and engage in energetic swim-offs. Harlin likewise never misses the chance to ladle on the Gothic atmosphere, Pierre Gill's cameras exploring the mansion-like college's elaborate exteriors and dimly-lit, gloomily stygian rooms while Tomandandy's hectic score tries to convince us that what we're watching is a high-octane, post-modern chiller. It doesn't quite wash: while undeserving of the near-universally hostile reception it's received from American critics (review-barometer website Metacritic reckons the film has inspired "extreme dislike or disgust",) The Covenant mainly serves to provides further evidence of the decline in Harlin's own once-impressive powers. And the time for him to somehow (re-)Ascend has surely long since come and gone. Neil Young 18th/19th December, 2006 THE COVENANT : [5/10] : USA (US/Can) 2006 : Renny HARLIN : 97 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Empire cinema, Sunderland (UK), 18th December 2006 - public show (paid £5.50) * The psycho is charismatic bloodsucker Kit, who must be killed on hallowed ground if Sean and co are to be rid of the ‘vampire virus' which is "telegenetic" - expiring when its source is extinguished. This is only a tiny part of the cumbersome vampire lore dispensed by Nick, stretching back to the Crusades, when a demon struck a deal with eight defeated Christian knights, including Kit, who's like something out of a bad Bon Jovi tribute band. The half-baked mythology and endless rules just get in the way, and Cardone would be advised to watch Jeepers Creepers, a more refreshingly straight-arrow road-horror which resisted the temptation to load us with too much detail. Instead, The Forsaken rapidly bogs down into a tension-free hybrid of The Lost Boys, John Carpenter's Vampires and Near Dark... [read the whole review] Meanwhile, and whatever its faults, The Covenant at least managed to inspire THIS
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