Good high school witches try to fight off a bad high school witch—a transfer student—in director Renny Harlin's latest action film, The Covenant.
Who wins? Nobody, according to critics, who are almost unanimously lamenting this lousy, not-so-thrilling thriller. But their efforts seem to be in vain. This poorly acted, poorly scripted project is the weekend box office champ.
David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) writes, "The dank atmospherics can't disguise a run-of-the-mill script which substitutes schlocky sorcery effects for story or any real suspense. There are a couple of mildly spooky sequences … but overall there's not much scary in the movie."
Bob Hoose (Plugged In) says it's "an adequately acted (though one-dimensional) movie … aimed squarely at the teen and twentysomething Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed audience." He found it surprisingly short on gore and explicit sexuality, but he's still uncomfortable with the way it treats real-world darkness as mere fantasy.
You'll find a lot more lamenting in the reviews of mainstream critics.