The Covenant review

Described by its makers as this generation’s answer to The Lost Boys, The Covenant is actually more like Harry Potter meets My Chemical Romance. Renny Harlin – the man who couldn’t make Satan scary in Exorcist: The Beginning – delivers a truly awful story about four teenage warlocks in a Massachusetts boarding school. It’s essentially The Craft with Y chromosomes, the good-looking heroes (led by Sky High’s Steven Strait) cursed with “important” supernatural powers that let them cheat at pool and lift up babes’ skirts. It’s borderline brain-dead and all dressed up with some stylised Goth trappings, flash cars and a surprising amount of latent homoeroticism (communal male showers and gratuitous Speedo scenes alert). Harlin botches every scare and trips over the script’s endless plot exposition, yet still has the cheek to set up a sequel-chasing finale. A right load of old warlocks.