Prime Time: The Covenant (2006)

Directed by Renny Harlin and written by J. S. Cardone, The Covenant is a fun and vapid tale of young sorcerers battling one another as they face a major threat on the way to gaining their full powers once they reach adulthood.

An opening text tells you about the Sons Of Ipswich, descendants of the most powerful families in the area they live, gaining powers at the age of 13 before they fully “ascend” at the age of 18. Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait) is the nominal leader of the four young men, and he is the first one due to turn 18 soon. There’s jealousy and anger in the group, especially when some misuse their power, a power that is addictive and damaging, and things get more strained with the arrival of two newcomers, a young woman (Sarah, played by Laura Ramsey) and a young man (Chase, played by Sebastian Stan). And someone is using powers to cause trouble, but who is it?

Harlin is someone I have mentioned before as a director who consistently delivered fun movies for a number of years before then losing his touch and helming movies that felt far removed from his better outings. As much as many may deride, and even hate, The Covenant, I have always thought it was a blast. Cardone’s script is predictable and just the right level of silly, taking time, for example, to allow the main characters to shout “Harry Potter can kiss my ass” as they take their car up in the air while they evade police. It will make you cringe at times, but it's better than any script used in Cardone's own directorial efforts, I can tell you that much.

The cast are all attractive youngsters, picked for how they look in the different groups, and probably how they work in scenes that have then shooting balls of energy from their hands (a special skill that Strait also displayed in the enjoyable Sky High). Nobody stands out, not even Strait or Stan, but they fit perfectly with the cool and glossy aesthetic of the movie. It may be a film with supernatural moments dotted throughout almost every scene, but this is not aiming to create any scares. Thrills, yes, but no scares.

There’s an energetic soundtrack, ready to pop up whenever it takes Harlin’s fancy, the CGI isn’t too bad, masked by the blue/grey colour scheme a lot of the time (it isn’t great, but it is serviceable), and you get decent pacing from start to finish. It is a teen movie, unashamedly so, and definitely aiming to appeal to people who have enjoyed the massively popular hits of supernatural pop culture touchstones from the past few decades (Potter, Buffy, Charmed, Supernatural). It doesn’t even entirely work in that regard, yet it makes itself almost impossible to find boring and unlikeable. Which is a statement I know will just encourage responses from anyone who found it boring and unlikeable.

I have watched this a few times over the years. I would happily watch it again. I know I am in the minority, but this is my review and I’m not suddenly going to start to pretend that I have any sense of shame.

7/10

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The Monster Project (2017)

Devon (Justin Bruening) and Jamal (Jamal Quezaire) are a pair of filmmakers who have a plan. Well, Devon has a plan. It involves getting filmed interviews with people who claim to be real monsters. They form a little group, with Devon's ex, Murielle (Murielle Zuker), and Bryan (Toby Hemingway), a recovering addict, and set up to film in an isolated house. The three main monsters to be interviewed are a vampire (Shayla, played by Yvonne Zima), a skinwalker (Steven, played by Steven Flores), and a woman who claims to be possessed by a demon (Shiori, played by Shiori Ideta).

There’s a general rule to supposed “found footage” movies. I may have mentioned it before. The quicker things move into night-vision mode, the weaker it is. The Monster Project turns off the lights about halfway through.

Directed by Victor Mathieu, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Corbin Billings and Shariya Lynn, there’s a decent idea at the heart of this. It also makes a wise decision in having the character of Bryan being someone who may not trust his instincts until things are getting crazier and crazier. It is just a shame that it then settles for being a very standard, and very disappointing, “found footage” movie. I used quotation marks there as this has a number of details that stop it from being as authentic as some other movies done in this style.

The effects are quite well done, and the plotting is about as good as you can expect from something with this premise, but a lot of the dialogue is weak, there are no surprises, and it never feels more energised, even during a third act that starts to feel like the moments that the film-makers were all looking forward to recording.

Zima is the absolute highlight, her vampire character causing friction within the group when she reveals a truth she then claims she didn’t realise was a secret. She is dark, playful, sexy, and deadly all in one. Nobody else comes close to her presence, although Ideta does very well with her turn. Hemingway also does a decent job, which almost makes up for the other leads. Quezaire suffers the most, written almost exactly like the black characters used to show the comedic and misrepresentative examples of stock black characters in Not Another Teen Movie.

That premise is enough to buy this some goodwill, but not quite enough to forgive it for the cumulation of every wrong choice that makes up the second half. Almost worth your time, and I am sure one or two people will absolutely love it.

4/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Girl In The Photographs (2015)

Although not all horror movies need to fit nicely into a narrowly-defined genre pigeonhole, some films seem to make their biggest mistake in being far too non-committal to the genre. They want to be a thriller, or they want to be too funny, or they want to concentrate on some more serious dramatic elements. None of these things are wrong, depending on your movie, but they feel wrong when placed in a horror movie framework that you think has been reluctantly chosen by a director who couldn't figure out another approach.

The Girl In The Photographs is one of those movies. It's a thriller, for the most part, and a fairly standard one, but you get a bit more nastiness here and some gore in the finale. It's not enough, however, to distract you from the weak script, lack of logic, and poor acting from almost everyone involved (including/especially Kal Penn).

The standard plot sees a young woman (Colleen, played by Claudia Lee) targeted by some sick kidnappers/killers. They keep leaving her photos of their latest victim, photos that somehow show things clearly enough to be upsetting without giving away anything that could help the police. An arrogant photographer (Peter Hemmings, played by Penn) finds out about this, assumes that the psycho is homaging his work, and decides to head back to his home town, thinking he may lure the killer out and solve the case (yes, the plan is as dumb as it sounds).

Nick Simon doesn't have too many features to his credit, as director, but perhaps the most telling thing about his filmography is the fact that 2 Lava 2 Lantula! seems to be one of his better outings. He also helped write this script, alongside Oz Perkins and Robert Morast, and it's worth wondering just how well this could have turned out if it had been shaped by the singular, and more assured, vision of Perkins (who has built up a small, but acclaimed, filmography that has him marked out as a not-inconsiderable talent). From the character moments to the tonal slides, this film is one hell of a mess. Some people will still be able to enjoy it, messiness and all. I did not.

The performances really don't help either. Lee isn't too bad in her role, and there are some okay supporting turns here and there, but it's the bigger names who throw the film further out of balance. As much as I tend to like him onscreen, Penn is giving the worst performance I have ever seen from him here. He's a mix of Austin Powers (in standard photographer mode) and whoever you have met in your life that turned out to be the most irritating asshole you never wanted to meet again. Katharine Isabelle is onscreen just enough to remind you of how wonderful she is, and how the film would be much better if she was in the lead role (no offence intended to Lee, it's just . . . Katharine Isabelle), and Mitch Pileggi feels like he's only cast to make viewers go "do I know him? I think I know him, oh wait, that's him from The X-Files, isn't it?" That may seem unfair to Pileggi, who is just a working actor keeping himself in work, but his role feels just a bit too minor for him to be in it, which is what makes it feel even more like a simple case of distracting stunt casting.

I was almost more generous here with my rating, considering the things that seem perfectly okay, on a technical level, but the more I thought about it, the more I found to dislike. I don't want to mention the other performances, that range from the bland to the awful. I don't want to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who acts as if they were too worried about making an outright horror movie while being too inexperienced to make a cracking thriller. And I don't want to spend more time on a movie that felt like a waste of 95 minutes already.

3/10

The movie is currently available on Shudder, but I'd recommend picking something else on there instead.