And They Were Broommates: A Postmortem of The Covenant (2006)

The achievements of mankind are wonderous and many. We’re both storytellers and puzzle solvers. We’ve figured out the wheel, fire, indoor plumbing, and space flight. And yet some of us remain confounded by one perpetual riddle: What appeals to teenage girls? Three decades ago we got a strong hint with the release of The Craft (1996), a film about four disaffected teenage girls who turn to witchcraft to rebel against a world that makes them feel powerless. For the most part their coup backfires violently and spectacularly, but thirty years later the girls have an adoring fanbase and their story still occasionally plays in theaters.

Could the reason for The Craft‘s success have been that, in spite of their ability levitate and shapeshift, and regardless of their descent into megalomania, the girls at the heart of The Craft were sympathetic and relatable? Ten years later a group of studio execs decided the answer was a resounding “Bruh” and gave us The Covenant (2006), which assumes the only thing a teenage girl wants is a shirtless boy. (They did keep the levitation and shapeshifting, thank Manon.)

That they made The Craft: It’s Boys Now isn’t surprising. What is surprising is the film works as a blue-tinted cautionary tale about making shallow assumptions based on gender.

(There isn’t much to spoil, but spoil it we shall.)

While the girls of The Craft are mortal outcasts dealing with dysmorphia, racism, and abuse seeking to improve their station, Caleb Danvers (Steven Strait), Pogue Parry (Taylor Kitsch), Reid Garwin (Toby Hemingway), and Tyler Simms (Chace Crawford) are largely privileged and carefree. They’re referred to as “The Sons of Ipswich,” and implied to be untouchable. (“What are they? Like, a boy band?” new girl and audience surrogate Sarah (Laura Ramsey) asks, astutely.) We’re informed repeatedly through clunky and copious exposition that they were born into witchcraft and handed their first taste of “the Power” at age thirteen. The opening titles mention “mastering the Power,” but the fact that the eldest son automatically inherits the Power on his eighteenth birthday regardless of whether he’s done anything to earn it implies no effort’s required. (“I haven’t read the Book since we were kids,” Pogue sulks at Caleb after blanking on basic trivia about the very thing that underpins his entire reality.)

We do need stakes if there’s any hope of a plot, so Caleb’s mother, who dresses like a time traveler from 1930s Hollywood and drinks under the vacant glass gaze of a taxidermy jaguar, bitterly reminds Caleb that he will soon “Ascend” to full power, which is equal parts exciting and ominous. The catch is that the Power’s addictive (doing magic is repeatedly referred to as “using” with the grimness of an after school special), and using it causes premature aging. Caleb’s father learned this the hard way after a few too many trips to The Covenant’s equivalent of Bat Country and now lives hidden in an attic out in the woods with only the family groundskeeper and a taxidermy black bear for companionship.

The threat of attic exile doesn’t stop the boys from using magic to lift a girl’s skirt to settle an incredibly skeevy bet, cheat at pool against a vague nemesis who looks confusingly similar to Pogue, and bait the cops by driving off a cliff. YOLO, so you might as well live deliciously, bruh.¹

Caleb, the leader, tries to wrangle the others by pouting manfully and scolding them when they step out of line. He’s the eldest in spite of Pogue reading as a grown man in his mid-twenties (which Kitsch was at the time of filming). Caleb is a week away from Ascending. Pogue, whose name means “kiss” in Irish and something possibly offensive in military slang², is Caleb’s best friend. He’s sulky, drives a yellow Ducati and ignores his girlfriend Kate (Jessica Lucas) when he isn’t micromanaging who she hangs out with. Pogue never utters a “bruh” but it’s strongly implied with every line. Reid is the troublemaker, as indicated by his piercings, tattoos, and penchant for fingerless gloves, which are hard not to notice given his habit of curling his fingers near his lips to convince the audience he’s mercurial. Tyler, the youngest, is in the thrall of Reid and drives a Hummer. Tyler’s contribution to the enterprise is being the requisite fourth boy in this attempt to replicate The Craft with boys.

Tyler and Reid might be roommates.

The Covenant is what I’ll call a Schrodinger’s Lore situation where we’re given an overabundance of detail that somehow also goes nowhere. We’re told there were five families with surnames that sound credibly “Salem” (Danvers might ring a bell) and uh something-something …witchcraft? The writers attempt a sleight-of-hand where they hope the audience will dredge up their own vague trivia about the Salem Witch Trials to subconsciously fill in the gaps. The crux is that four of the families survive today and are bound by, you guessed it, a covenant of silence about their powers and have presumably pledged not do, like, evil stuff, though apparently upskirting is fine. The fifth family broke the covenant and died and definitely won’t come back.

Enter mysterious new transfer student Chase Collins (Sebastian Stan), and here’s where we start to get some semblance of a plot. Chase Collins (not to be confused with Chace Crawford, who plays Tyler Simms) materializes and wastes no time inserting himself into the Sons’ business, with a particular fixation on Caleb. Chase intrigues Caleb but rankles Pogue, who sometimes calls Caleb shirtless from bed at 2AM to talk about secret things and doesn’t want that arrangement to change.

There’s a mysterious death, a lightbulb breaks in the communal shower, the log truck from Final Destination 2 makes a cameo, and CGI spiders invade the dorms. Someone is “using” and Caleb immediately suspects Reid. Caleb and Reid have an anticlimactic scuffle in an alleyway in view of a red neon sign shaped like a lobster, but the matter remains unresolved.³

And then, during a freestyle race (all the boys are on the swim team, which provides them ample opportunity to playfully cavort unclothed in the locker room), Chase allows Caleb to see his eyes flash with magic and Caleb has a personal crisis. Just as Caleb figures out Chase is the fifth descendant, Chase spider-hexes Sarah.

Oh, that’s right. Sarah. Caleb’s love interest. The teenage girl self-insert conduit in this film for teenage girls.

Unfortunately for Sarah, one boy has broken containment and figured out how to open doors. Chase’s coup has effectively boxed out the girls. “Wait, what just happened? We were sitting together here having fun and now we’re watching them have fun,” Sarah says to Kate during the earlier bar scene while watching Caleb, Pogue, and Chase advance what little we have of plot without them, and she’s more right than she knows.

Chase reveals no one filled him in on the rules of the Power and the rapid aging thing until after he’d become addicted to “using.” Now Chase wants Caleb to fork over his share of the Power so he can avoid becoming Grandpa Sawyer before he’s old enough to drink. Chase demands Caleb meet him at the Old Putnam Barn “where you will will me your power,” a fantastically awkward line Sebastian Stan delivers with the gravity another actor might employ for Hamlet. Chase seals the deal by kissing Caleb, which alarms Caleb as much as any malicious supernatural occurrence in the film.

The film specifically lingered on it multiple times earlier, so it’s no surprise Chekov’s Old Putnam Barn plays a role in the final act. Presumably the writers chose the barn because there’s a lot of ambient battle royale potential in farm equipment, but this is The Covenant so, instead of creatively incorporating the environment and maybe coming up with some unique spells for Caleb and Chase to weaponize, we’re treated to the spectacle of mostly two guys blowing loads of goo at each other to heavy guitar riffs. It’s less the showdown from The Craft and more the rake fight from Hobgoblins.

“How about I make you my wi-otch,” Chase sneers at Caleb from above. If the dialogue in this film is an immovable object, Sebastian Stan is determined to be an unstoppable force.

Chase is ultimately … uh … well, it’s unspecified, but he vanishes and his lingering hexes break. There’s no evidence of a body in the remains of Chekov’s Old Putnam Barn and Caleb and Sarah, dazed and numb, awkwardly drive off into the cold damp of a New England dawn. The door is wide open for a sequel, which didn’t happen in spite of the film making a profit.⁴

Here’s the thing. I think the lack of follow-up is a shame.

The Covenant absolutely did not accomplish what it set out to do.⁵ By sidelining the girls while doggedly clinging to the things meant to titillate them, the film becomes a crucible of homoeroticism while remaining steadfastly unaware of what’s brewing beneath the surface. That may be for the best, given the film’s several not accidental queer-coded jabs at its villain.⁶ It’s probably safe to assume intentional queer material would not have been approached with dignity or care. I’m giving it a pretty charitable read, but it’s entirely reasonable to interpret it as homophobic. The queer community currently holds the Power to decide whether they want to reclaim it, which I’ve seen proposed but I also couldn’t find evidence it’s really happened on a wide scale.⁷

Unless you’re locked into riff-mode and/or doing a group watch, The Covenant can be a slog, but there’s a glimmer of a worthwhile idea in the gooey aftermath: a thoughtful queer retelling of The Craft. With an enthusiastic team of queer creatives helming the project, I’d bet multiple overlooked, underserved, and, sadly, actively under siege demographics would love the chance to see themselves wielding magic against their oppressors up on the screen⁸. That’s what made The Craft special: the audience seeing something relatable and human in the characters and watching them navigate situations that involved magic, yes, but were rooted in real struggles.

Being human is trial and error. Yes, we’ve figured out indoor plumbing and space flight, but also, far more frequently, we fail at stuff. Failure doesn’t mean giving up and/or confinement to the shame attic. With earnest reflection, failure can open doors. Perhaps, after examining where The Covenant failed, someone with a thoughtful, fresh vision will seize the opportunity to try again. Hell, next time they might even manage to Ascend. (Editor’s Note: I nominate Cassie Workman. -Nicole)

The Covenant is currently streaming for free with ads on Tubi.

1. While the term “affluenza” has been around for a long time it didn’t surge into the national conversation until 2013 with the arrest of Ethan Couch. ↩︎
2. Editor’s note: “Pogey bait” is “candy” in USMC slang. Happy Halloween! – RA ↩︎
3. As someone from Connecticut, I’m charmed by how intensely the film wants to establish we’re in Massachusetts in the same way I imagine someone from Luxembourg might be intrigued by the French pavilion at EPCOT. ↩︎
4. There was, however, a prequel comic where the Sons of Ipswitch come to certain realizations about themselves while away at summer camp. Also, Tyler’s name is Miller for some reason. ↩︎
5. You might wonder if the film isn’t meant for teen girls given the film’s so uninterested in them. This isn’t unusual in teen girl media which can run the gamut from “disinterested” to “open hatred” in its attitude towards its target audience. It often dotes on and enables the male characters, even when they’re terrorizing the girls. The openly abusive Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl is a particularly egregious example. My personal bitch-eating-crackers for the phenomenon is the mentally exhausting Francis from Reign. Apart from Pogue being nasty to Kate and the upskirting, The Covenant remains more disinterested than malicious, and it does clumsily follow the dating simulator/self-insert fantasy format where the girls aren’t so much characters as placeholders (e.g. Twilight.). ↩︎
6. At one point Chase is sidelined from “masculine” affairs by being dismissively told to “stay with the girls.” ↩︎
7. If I had to guess, the reason this film clings to the fringes of the zeitgeist is that four of its stars went on to mainstream success: Steven Strait (The Expanse), Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights), Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl, The Boys), and Sebastian Stan (Gossip Girl, The MCU). Stan and Toby Hemingway also cameo together in Black Swan, which got the living shit nominated out of it. ↩︎
8. Free idea: trans warlocks. Make it happen, AMC. ↩︎