So you’re a budding young movie producer and you have a pitch meeting with a group of Hollywood executives.  You know you need a hot idea, but you also know that these clowns take caution to a new a level.  All the decent TV shows have either been made are in production and you don’t have a franchise to sequel the hell out of.  So you have to give these cats something they can wrap their small, creativeless, unimaginative brains around.  ‘Guys’, you begin, ‘Think N-Sync meets Harry Potter’.  They ponder it for a while and then one jumps up in glee!  “Hot guys who are witches?”  You think to yourself, ‘warlocks idiot, but whatever.  Just greenlight the bitch.’.

And greenlight it they do in Renny Harlin’s ‘The Covenant’, a tale of the descendents of the Salem witches who all grow up to be male underwear models.  Caleb (Jason Straight), Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Tyler (Chace Crawford), and Reid (Toby Hemmingway) are cousins and known as the sons of Iplich around their sleepy northeastern town. As male descendents of the five surviving families of the Salem Witch hunt, they each have these supernatural powers which pop up around the age of 13.  I said five families, but there are only four boys.  Well, one of the witches was killed back in the day leaving only four surviving blood lines.  Hmmm….  I sense some foreshadowing going on here…  Caleb is the oldest, and apparently has the best abs since he wears a wife beater that is a good 4 sizes too small.  Caleb is also the most powerful of the cousins and will turn 18 years old, causing him to ‘ascend’, or to reach his full power potential.  The problem with that is that the power is intoxicating, and the more you use, the more life you lose.  Just ask Caleb’s Dad.  Problems start

to arise around town when some strange things begin happening though.  There are all kinds of freaky phenomena going on with students turning up weirdly dead, ghoulish spirits making unannounced appearances, and evil spiders crawling about.  You see, the four cousins can ‘feel’ when the ‘power’ is being used by someone but they all claim ‘it ain’t me!’.   Seems like there’s another force in town but who could it be…

Well I’m not going to ‘spoil’ it for you, but if there are four main characters, and then a new kid comes to town, weird things start happening, and when we’re forewarned about a fifth bloodline, you don’t have to be Sherlock Homey to figure out who the trouble maker is.

Silly, inane and stupid could be words I could use to describe ‘The Covenant’, but I’m pretty certain that the guys behind this little masterpiece already knew that going in, so we’re going to keep this simple.  If you’re a teenage girl who likes watching cute guys parade around in tight t-shirts and hang around swimming pools in Speedo’s then I think they just might have made your movie.  Hell, you might be an older girl that likes that particular kind of thing, though I would hope an older girl would like some veggies and a maybe nice bottle of red to go with her beef.  Or you may be an older boy for that matter who goes for this kind thing.  Indeed, to each his own.  There are only two girls in this movie (Laura Ramsey and Jessica Lucas) both very cute, who only exist to become distressed and be rescued, and there are a host of cheesy special effects, nice cars, quick editing and bad pop music to keep your brain pickled for the entire 90-minute running time.

But seriously, there are way worse movies there than ‘The Covenant’, and who knows, the movie may become a hit.  Should that happen, perhaps Sony records should stick these young men in the recording studio and prepare ‘The Covenant Boyz:  The Album’.  Now try and tell me I shouldn’t be an entertainment executive.