Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on January 4, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
This is gonna be a short one, folks, since the special features on Sony Pictures’ DVD of Renny Harlin’s The Covenant are fairly limited and the reaction to watching it at home is pretty much the same as that to seeing it in a theater (check out our original review here). The saga of a group of boarding-school warlocks dealing with love, power struggles and a villain in their midst remains a flashy, empty experience—visually and aurally as slick and polished as can be, even if the disc’s Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and 2.35:1 widescreen fury wind up signifying next to nothing on an emotional level.
The movie overdoses on CGI, an approach that Harlin describes on his commentary track as a necessary evil in today’s cinema scene. While many viewers may disagree, the director dutifully points out all the scenes enhanced by digital trickery, along with locations and other production basics. Fortunately, there’s enough good anecdotal material in his discussion to make his track more entertaining overall than the feature itself, as Harlin reminisces with deadpan good humor about things like the futility of seeking spiders that take direction; the casting process involved in finding a girl whose sole purpose is to have her skirt telekinetically lifted on screen; and the “tree carousels” used to stage some of the car-interior driving shots.
Sadly, we don’t get any footage of that faux foliage in the disc’s making-of documentary, though there is a fun peek at the director trying out the wire-flying rig (originally designed for the Cirque du Soleil) utilized in The Covenant’s climactic airborne battle. For anyone curious about the nuts and bolts of bringing this particular flick to the screen, the doc will no doubt satisfy, as Harlin, his cast and other contributors like producer Tom Rosenberg and visual FX supervisor James McQuaide (though not, tellingly, scripter J.S. Cardone) reveal their contributions and shower praise upon each other amidst many quick glimpses behind the scenes.
One of the entertaining tales Harlin relates on his commentary involves what he refers to as “butter point-of-view shots.” That’s a phrase an instructor used to chastise him back in film school, when the teacher objected to what he saw as an unmotivated angle from inside a refrigerator in one of Harlin’s student movies. The director argues that such shots are an important part of bringing visual interest to a screen story, and he’s certainly got a point—though many people watching The Covenant might well wish for a little less “butter” and a lot more meat.
