I take my trusty notebook with me on every trip to the theatre, and while watching the new Screen Gems thriller The Covenant, it got the biggest workout it's had in a long time. Sitting in the darkened theatre, I scrambled to jot down as many notes as I could, trying to keep track of who was who and rack up a list of smarmy comments to use in this critique. For what should have been a simple B-horror flick aimed squarely at getting teenagers and their dates to swing on by their local multiplexes, The Covenant insists on taking itself too seriously and tries to weave a complex storyline, thereby  transforming what might have been a fairly mediocre flick into a laughably bad thriller that made me yearn for Nicolas Cage's random karate moves in The Wicker Man.

As a title card informs the audience, once upon a time there were a number of families in western Europe who developed supernatural powers while practicing witchcraft. After escaping persecution at home only to land smack dab in the middle of the Salem Witch Hunts in America, the families banded together to keep their powers a secret. Years later, the latest descendants of the families -- Caleb (Steven Strait), Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Reid (Toby Hemingway), and Tyler (Chace Crawford) -- are a close-knit group of prep school friends, anxiously awaiting the day that they "ascend" (i.e. their powers reach their fever pitch).

Caleb is the more cautious and sensible of the bunch, fully aware of the dangers of overusing their powers (which will lead to fast, premature aging) and only applying his own abilities in emergencies. But Caleb begins to sense that there's someone nearby with abilities equal to or even greater than his own, a sign that a family with members who also dabbled in the dark arts, but was thought to have died off centuries ago, might still be alive and kicking. Seeing this as a threat to his friends and his new girlfriend Sarah (Laura Ramsey), Caleb quickly sets out to find out who the warlock-in-hiding is before anyone else becomes a victim of the mystery man's powers.

The Covenant is one of the most insanely dopey movies I've seen in recent years. When I say "dopey," I don't mean the movie has a few goofball moments where it flubs up but otherwise remains fairly innocuous. I'm talking about the sort of idiocy found in dialogue like, "She looks like she was bitten by hundreds of insects -- like spiders!" I'm talking about the sort of dunderheaded mindset that gives four teenagers the ability to do pretty much whatever they want, and they use said powers to run from the cops and throw beer kegs at each other. I'm referring to the sheer inanity of the ultimate battle of Good versus Evil being boiled down to two boy band members hurling awful special effects at each other.

The Covenant seems blissfully ignorant about what a grand-scale mess it is. Right off the bat, it doesn't help that the film presents itself as a mystery, when every trailer and TV ad "spoils" what the movie still tries concealing as a "surprise." With that in mind, there's really nowhere to go in terms of the story; as an audience member, all you can do once the beginning credits roll is watch the film trudge on toward its foregone conclusion. 

Starting off as a corny but bearable thriller, The Covenant goes continually downhill. Filled with interchangable characters, oomph-less set pieces and ambiguous mythology, it ends with one of the goofiest cinematic showdowns ever, pitting Strait against the evil warlock in a battle that looks like what would happen if Ed Wood took a crash-course in computerized special effects. There's just no logic, no set of rules or any sense of boundaries to work within; The Covenant does whatever it wants to at the convenience of the so-called plot. Frankly, it left me in the dust with nothing else better to do than smack myself in the head with my Raisinet box

Director Renny Harlin, whose last encounter with the horror genre was the ill-advised Exorcist: The Beginning, and screenwriter J.S. Cardone, the man behind that anemic vampire flick called The Forsaken, pool their "talents" to concoct a story resembling a failed pilot for a supernatural show on the WB network ("Dawson's Coven," perhaps). And the cast members? They seem stuck in a complacent funk requiring the same sort of bored performance from everyone. Even the talented Strait (Sky High) and the beautiful Ramsey (She's the Man) can't escape this curse. 

While there are many different reasons why some horror flicks don't work, The Covenant is bad because it's off in its own fantasy world and forgets to bring the audience along for the ride. 

MY RATING: * (out of ****)

(Released by Screen Gems and rated "PG-13" for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images, sexual content, partial nudity and language.)