User reviews

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.

I don't know what "well acted" movie other reviewers saw but I can't imagine it was this one. The acting was HORRIBLE, the story was old and used up, the cinematography was embarrassing, the "effects" were a joke. This is literally one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Pass on this one, I wish I had.

I do not want to be too long, therefore I just want help who s choosing the movie with some no-spoiler key points: 1) It's kind of low budget movie, with some implantation from many other horror movies, not very well assembled 2) this cause a miss of suspense and adrenaline, in scenes where Director could do better 3) actors are not that bad, however their characters don't have the chance to be deepened along the story. 4) I did appreciate Clint James I guess He did as much as he could. 5) The worst thing is that this movie is missing the climax, mandatory for a kind of movies like this ones, letting the watcher with an unpleasant feeling of the overall story. Generally I wouldn't suggest this movie to anyone, but I definitively cannot say it has been the worst low budget movie I have seen. But is it low budget? I hope it is, but very far from good works like IT Follows.

It is a good movie in low budget with great acting from all characters and also some horror scenes created in the movie.

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.

One of the strongest aspects of The Covenant is the solid production value and the solid performances. I thought the female lead and her male counterpart, along with the actor portraying the priest all delivered convincing and engaging performances. The female lead had a demanding role and she committed to it with very successful results. The production value and creative cinematography work of this movie enhanced the experience for me as a viewer. The demonic possession and the pregnancy make the film stand out, the concept makes the film very original and refreshing. The stakes were higher, and the film will be remembered for its twist. Overall, a strong feature film with lots of horror and suspense.

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.

There are two main problems with this movie:

1) The writing. The story is a shambolic mix of generic horror plot elements. If you asked a not too intelligent AI bot to construct a plot for a horror movie, this is what it might have come up with. Now, given that I assume (perhaps incorrectly, who can tell) that this mess was not written by a bot...well, what can you say? It doesn't speak well for the writers, does it? Absolutely terrible job, sorry. Even if it had been done as a spoof, it would have been bad (and it's not a spoof, even though it looks like at it at times).

2) The acting. With hardly an exception, the acting performances are extremely flat at best - and downright embarrassing at worst. There isn't a single character of importance who isn't portrayed in an utterly unconvincing manner.

Conclusion: any rating over 5 stars must have been submitted by someone who was either drunk or a shill of some kind. There is no reason why you should waste your time on this movie, it has no upsides of any kind that I can think of.

Movies with anything related to an exorcism have it hard. That is of course especially true if you have seen the ultimate movie in exorcism - The Exorcist! There are some other horror movies that have themes of exorcism that are good, but I have yet to see one to match the quality of that 70s movie.

Having said that, it would be unfair to judge an independent low budget movie with a classic. Try not to do that and you may be able to have fun watching this one. Because all things considered it is decent. It does not have Oscar worthy performances, but the actors are not really bad either. A few almost insane things happen, but overall this is still quite predictable ...

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

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.

How best to describe "The Covenant" - enigmatic? How about the poor man's "...Exorcist" with a bit of "The Omen" thrown in near the end? Best not to mention the incest, which was unwitting on the part of the male lead.

The film begins with the funeral of a young girl followed swiftly by the suicide of her father. Elizabeth had been suffering from leukaemia but she actually drowned in her bath. It could have been suicide or a tragic accident, but her father blames her mother. Having suffered so much tragedy in so short a time, Sarah moves back to her mother's house along with her brother, whom she hasn't seen for a decade. Even if she were not severely disturbed, their relationship would be tense, but Sarah is intent on cutting herself with a knife.

In desperation, her brother enlists the help of the local priest, who flees the house in panic, and later cuts out his own tongue. Then there is the fundamentalist Christian neighbour who senses a bit too much, and who is this old guy who keeps following the brother around asking him enigmatic questions?

There is only one thing to do: on the recommendation of the aforementioned priest, he recruits an exorcist and his sidekick. The cause of the trouble is soon identified, Sarah is possessed, but can they cast out the demon? Whatever the answer to that question, the ending begs a sequel. Expect one sooner rather than later.

It deserves more than the 3.7 rating it has at present. OK, we're not talking Exorcist or Exorcist III here but it's much better than the usual stuff that's made in this genre.

Sarah Doyle loses her daughter to leukemia, although we find later there's a little more to it than that. Her husband after the funeral shoots himself in front of Sarah. Shattered by these events Sarah allows her brother to take her back to the house in which they lived as children. There he hopes to help his sister recuperate.

The best laid plans of mice and men, etc. Things don't quite turn out as planned. There is something in the house, an ancient and malevolent presence that seems to have been waiting for Sarah. She starts hearing voices, seeing her dead daughter and then begins to self-mutilate. Her concerned brother asks a local priest to talk to her but as he begins to counsel her a face appears behind her and the priest hurries from the house in terror. Shortly after he slices off his own tongue in front of his housekeeper. Then things begin to get really bad.

The rest of the movie doesn't disappoint the expectations that have been built up. I'm very hard to please with horror movies but this one I did find enjoyable.

Not bad at al, acting is little weak here and there, sound production needs work(sounds like it was mixed in a bathroom at points), but good story, kept me interested. Nice rainy day horror flick! Oh, and it's better than La La Land!

It's actually an OK possession / exorcism movie for the most part, until the ending. In the ending, the quality drops down significantly - idiotic cumbersome fight along with amateur editing, really poor visual effects with samely poor camera work. Not to mention the ridiculous ending scene.

I don't know what happened, but until that point it was a decent indie movie with great casting, good acting and some memorable scenes (like the sex scene). Seems to be one of these many, many indie movies whose creators just can't end their movies so they come with something fast and just call it a day.

I went in with low expectations and this exceeded them. One of the better in the ever-growing crop of satanic mythology. This one even has something close to a twist in it but no spoilers here. If you like Christian good-v-evil movies, give it a look. You can even root for the bad guy.

After the death of her family, a woman attempting to move on by restarting her relationship with her estranged brother in their childhood home finds that a series of strange incidents is only the start of a supernatural force preying on them and must find a way to stop it.

This one wasn't all that bad and did have some decent elements about it. One of the strongest elements at play here is the way it manages to really dwell in the idea that something supernatural is really happening as it builds up quite a solid mystery. The fact that it starts to occur right after her arrival with the strange visions and happenings from the crying in the distance to the voices whispering in the rooms that come out of nowhere all offer up some solid jump scares along the way. By tying that all into the running plot thread about her trying to cut herself and being so withdrawn over the incidents in her life, the first half gives this a rather intriguing premise to lay- out the series of revelations that emerge as this one moves along into the later realms unveiling the backstory about the actual causes of the incidents in her past. How easily it goes from the concept of the supernatural infesting the house to the idea of demonic possession and influence abound in their community with the mysterious strangers in their lives warning about their need to prevent interference in their plans and how it finally manifests in her full-blown possession that carries itself along for the final half of this one with all the traditional trappings of the style before which is still quite fun and cheesy with all the yelling, cursing and religious epithets offered that makes for a usual exorcism attempt. It does end this one quite nicely on that kind of high note which is quite fun as the altered bodily appearance and feats of supernatural strength that all great attempts utilize, and all make for quite a decent time here. There's still some flaws with this one, starting with the rather routine and clichéd storyline that never really offers up many original or unique surprises along the way. It's all pretty much as expected how this one will play out and it follows through on that in here, making for quite a rather rudimentary feel at times with this one containing so many familiar plot-points that emerge from this one, which is what continually occurs through this one. The lonely recluse, the mysterious vague stranger, the troubled priest and the nosey religious neighbor interfering in everything are just some of the different elements brought up here, and in conjunction with the overly familiar plot line there's just not a whole lot of interesting or original material found here that really just comes off as the vast majority of the film's running time. It's really hard to also find a large part of the film scary or thrilling as what comes off here is just plain bland or boring to sit through recapping her descent into madness from what happened to her in the past as that isn't all that interesting or enjoyable sitting through her moping around about the death of her family. It really makes the film somewhat tough to get into with these dull, lifeless scenes coming along at the very beginning that doesn't really show off any kind of interesting or chilling material to make for a chilling film at first. These here are the film's problems.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Violence, Brief Nudity and a mild sex scene.

Honestly, I picked this up at a Redbox location because most everything else was sold out. Its not great, not bad, but good. The cover and name was very misleading to me, but that's OK. It starts off slow, so slow that I almost turned it off at one point.. I'm very glad that I didn't though! At times the lines seem rehearsed but most of the time the dialogue left me surprised at how truthful it felt. The way you can hear their lips smacking while forming words and at times the brother mumbles a bit, that is REAL life. It made me realize just how UNREAL the dialogue in most movies is. I appreciated the lead females role the most, her perfectly imperfect body was a relief and the fact that they had tattoos just felt so REAL.. A few times the lighting was off, sometimes it feels cheap, but all that can be forgiven. I really liked this movie honestly and didn't expect to. This is not your typical horror flick with jump scares and what not. It was refreshing to see something different!