The Covenant

A weakly written script and unrealistic performance of the lead roles with quite intensive screenplay.

I don't understand why this film has such a low rating on IMDb.

There are a couple of things that could have been improved on.

Firstly is the colour grading. Some of the shots (particularly the external ones) are not well balanced, and often the colour grading does not make sense to the viewer - thereby leading to some confusion about the relationship of one scene to the next or it's place in the story.

Next are some of the CGI effects. The effects are appropriate for the scene, but are not integrated well.

Apart form those couple of things, technically the film is OK and are soon forgiven as the story unfolds.

All of the actors do a good job of portraying the characters, and I felt there was a genuine connection between them in relation to the story being told.

All in all it is a film worth watching, and worth more than the low rating on IMDb.

What we have here, is a basic Exorcist type horror. It looks bad, is acted bad and the script is bad. There is no real horror or suspense, so one could say the movie fails at everything but it's not actually catastrophically bad.

I personally enjoyed the story. The acting and vfx were quite good (except for the demon one, I'm sorry...). Probably bit more development of the characters would have neen nice.

Besides that, I would say the color doesn't help. It was not balanced and you could notice the difference between scenes, which makes the audience lose track. And as a musician myself, definitely I have to say there was extreeeeemely low work on it. Lot of noise between dialogues and zero music!!! Seriously... this movie needed much more work. Sound effects were weak, and, as I said, zero zero music. That reaaaally made me sad.

I did not entirely dislike this movie. And that is not a promising way to start a review.

The story is kind of beaten to death - do not expect significant twists and turns along the ride for like 99% of the movie. What i look at very much in horror movies is "how the protagonists communicate with each other". How do they tell each other about the things they have seen, heard, experienced. For me - a horror movie succeeds or fails with the communication. When the protagonists act idiotic and simply leave out the crucial facts - while chatting away in vague terms only - the best story and visuals cannot save it.

In that movie - the communication between the protagonists was ... alright. It certainly was not perfect (far from it) - but then again - the movie does not go into sufficient detail about the relationship of them. However - considering they are siblings - i did expect more empathy - even for siblings that became estranged. All in all though ... it is still "ok".

Another factor about the communication between them and that it did not feel quite good - was the acting. At times i felt thrown back to an 80s or 70s horror flick with its immense overacting. In short - i really, REALLY did not like the acting at all. It was not high school level bad - but it was very low budget bad.

The practical effects were good enough - but the movie did not demand much anyway. The CGI effects or other visual trickery was pretty bad.

Why was it still a 4/10 for me then?

It was consequential and did not fall for a typical resolution. I value this very highly when it comes to movies that usually follow very strict parameters.