My movie watching has been stymied for the last little while by having in my possession The Lost (Season 2, Disk 3 I think), Lady in the Water (which was actually pretty good) and The Covenant.

I knew the Covenant was going to be bad, I think Netflix gave it two stars. And so I just couldn’t get behind watching it. The only reason I got it was because as a genre I think urban fantasy is interesting and was hoping it had an interesting element or two.

I was actually doing other things while watching it and I’m usually less critical of movies that don’t have to absorb my entire attention. Given that I still thought it had some potential, they failed to deliver on any of it, but it could have been conceptually interesting.

The real downfall was the end. When two mages face off it should not include one charging the other on a motorcycle like a jousting match. When you see that scene that is when the writer or directors or someone stopped trying to be imaginative. The final battle is all energy bolts with a little TK thrown in for flavor. Some times the shimmering bolts would hit and people would get hurt, othertimes identical looking bolts would be shrugged off. The whole battle just became tedious.

The real problem with the ending is the lever. I’m evil and gone through the trouble of abducting your love to force you to relinquish your power to me. You show up at the appointed place and the chick is suspended in air in some sort of undefined peril and you decide to fight me because your that kind of guy. I now have the choice of fighting you fair or giving the lever a little kick.

Since I’m evil I decide to fight you fair. What?!

Aparanlty counter magic for anything more subtle than a telekenetic blast is just unheard of. It seems once you tag someone with a spell there is no way magic could undo those effects.

Anyway if you like the genre and you need something playing in the background sure, otherwise probably skip it.