The Covenant

Screen Gems supremo Clint Culpepper had clear aspirations for this teen horror movie: ‘I wanted to make a “Lost Boys” for this generation.’ As directed by Renny Harlin, from a lame script by repeat offender J S Cardone (‘The Forsaken’), this fulfils the brief perfectly. A tale of modern-day warlocks, it is every bit as dumb, flashy and loud as Joel Schumacher’s 1987 vampire movie.

Directly descended from the families who colonised New England in the late seventeenth century, the buff-bodied ‘Sons of Ipswich’ possess supernatural powers that will increase when they reach their eighteenth birthday. Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait) will be the first of the four to ‘ascend’. But first he must make out with poor scholarship girl Sarah Wenham (Laura Ramsey); avoid his decrepit father’s fate, by resisting the temptation to use his addictive but ageing powers; and confront his slightly fey nemesis, power-hungry ‘darkling’ Chase Collins (Sebastian Stan).

Flying scenes, frat-boy face-offs and pyrotechnic punch-ups are punctuated by excruciating expository dialogue, while a nasty whiff of homophobia sits uneasily with the many lingering shots of naked male torsos.