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The Covenant

It seems there’s a moment every day for me lately that the idea of hell as a place with fire and brimstone seems a defunct concept. I have serious doubts that it’s a place where there’s a vast ocean of fire filled with lost souls burning for all eternity, an abundance of demons and episodes of Webster perpetually airing on big screen TVs everywhere. No, I’m of the belief that this planet is slowly becoming hell. And not a day goes by where this is not proven further.

Admittedly, it’s usually the small things that either make me cry to myself or lash out in anger. Most of the time it’s coming into contact with a person who simple logic has managed to escape. Other times it’s a really dumb person getting really excited over an equally dumb song. Reality TV shows do the trick too. Dumb commercials work. Kevin Federline. All these things and more have the potential to be a catalyst for a tri-state killing spree that not even fluffy kittens could bring me down from. This internal (and perhaps one day external) berserker rage lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to the entire 24 hours of the day.

One of the things that set me off recently was the movie The Covenant. You know the one—it’s a notch below a cross between The Lost Boys and The Craft. I remember seeing the commercial for the first time and I couldn’t figure out if it was trying to make you feel like part of the gang or make you piss yourself with laughter.

Once inside “the covenant” I felt like I was hanging out with the goth version of The OC and noticed that a lot of the crowd was really into the show Charmed. A lot of Evanescence t-shirts there too. I knew the geekfest would only be a temporary obstacle but some of these turkeys started standing up with their right hands in the air. You know, like when you get really fucked up and want to freak yourself out or see how long you can watch a religious channel? I once got about two minutes before I ran screaming down the street naked. It was mainly overweight people who let themselves go years ago wearing a lot of faded black. If they were really excited about seeing The Covenant they wore their blackest black.

Trying to sit through The Covenant reminded me a lot of the time when I went to see The People Under the Stairs at the (then) $1.50 movies. At the time, my friends and I must have seen it there at least 5 times apiece. At that point we just went to see it so we had some place to sober up before going home. But one night we started screwing with the crowd to the point where the usher had to escort us out through the emergency exit up front. This really has nothing to do with the story, but I was just thinking about how I wish those guys were there with me when I watched The Covenant. This movie was worse than the 1993 all female western Bad Girls. Look it up if you’re not vomiting right now and you’d like to be.

As to the movie itself, you’ll probably laugh at the basic cable special effects, metal video film effects and how The Covenant generally takes itself very, very seriously. Watching this movie go for the gold is almost like getting hit on by a person with Down syndrome. You might feel bad about turning them down, but at the end of the day you’re not risking any flipper kids.