The Covenant

This was a fun, fast-paced, and very glossy flick, and I enjoyed it. It certainly isn't high art, by any stretch, but for what it was, I thought it was really well done.
The four teenaged scions of old Ipswich witch families are on the cusp of coming of age and into their full powers. The power, however, has a price - it ages its user with each spell, and it's addictive. Just before the eighteenth birthday of the oldest of the set, Caleb, a new magic user with naught but bad intentions appears on the scene, determined to take power for himself. Not super original, but we're talking about a PG-13 teen thriller here, not Citizen Kane. Naturally, there is a love interest for the main protagonist who gets caught up in the struggle, becoming a pawn and a prize in the game. There is also an undercurrent of normal teenaged discord between not only the four "Sons of Ipswich," but also with other age mates at their school. I thought the writing, directing, and acting did a great job of making these characters human in spite of their powers and their undeniable and enviable cool. I liked that you could see teenage friends who love each other, but don't always get along, and that even though they had access to great power, that power came with a price some were willing to pay and some were not. This movie had the slickness of movies like Underworld, Blade or Queen of the Damned (which I know many people didn't like, but if you look at them in the spirit of an enjoyable, escapist, heavily music-video-influenced appeal to the seduction of an untapped and fairly harmless dark side of their audiences you can see where they succeed and can be a good time), but lacked the sort of overly egocentric wish fulfillment those movies too-powerful and thoroughly unbeatable characters embodied.
In the end, I thought it was a good time.