Harlin, with his customary visual brio, has created a film that is deliriously watchable. It's just not all that interesting. In the end, The Covenant is simply a glossier version of TV's "Charmed."

Utterly stupid and full of lazy plotting and lazier dialogue, this is just idiotic enough to entertain on nights when you want to give your brain a rest.

Profoundly mediocre supernatural thriller.

When the villain is revealed, you are neither surprised nor scared. You just think, "That guy?"

The Covenant is dopey, formulaic stuff for the Friday night fright crowd. Worse for them, it's never remotely scary.

Okay, so it isn't challenging. There are worse things for a horror-thriller about supernatural high-schoolers to not be. Like not scary. Or not thrilling. Or not as entertaining as an episode of "Charmed."

The idiocy and sheer laziness of the whole concept ought to be the sort of thing director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) could make into glorious cinematic cheese, and occasionally he cuts loose with a swarm of CGI spiders or a final battle that resembles nothing more than a live action game of "Street Fighter II." But he's hamstrung by the PG-13 rating and the budget.

As boredom sets in, the viewer realizes that "The Covenant" does possess one magical power: It afflicts its audience with restless leg syndrome.

For the most part, the proceedings are slow, solemn and tedious.

It fails utterly as a horror picture, although it delivers plenty of PG-13-rated flesh and unintentional laughs.

Muddled and most unmagical offering.

Cobbled-together teenybopper tripe.

Surely nothing Hollywood did in its darkest, most debauched hour could possibly justify the penance we're paying that allows Harlin to continue directing movies.

Crushingly dull teen horror flick.