YMMV / The Covenant

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Especially among female viewers. Be honest, what is one more likely to remember from this film: the riveting plot? Or the homoerotic rivalry between a Sky High (2005)-era Steven Strait and a young Sebastian Stan?
• Complete Monster: Chase Collins is a young warlock descended from the bloodline of a wizard banished from a 17th-century magic covenant for using his powers for evil. When he discovered his abilities he enjoyed the power rush, and used his father's pain to convince him to kill himself and grant him more. He killed his foster parents in a car accident when they learned too much. He wants to cannibalize the other descendants for their magic to counteract the aging effects of magic use, even after being told that it won't work. He puts death spells on their loved ones to get them to grant it, for which he needs verbal consent. He kills other students for kicks. His only motives for his crimes are power and fun.
• Critic-Proof: The Covenant was near universally panned by critics, but topped the box office charts during its debut week. Also, the fanfic community is surprisingly large.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics loathed this film (it scored 19/100 in Metacritic), but the audience were more generous.
• Cult Classic: For a film that was trashed by critics and did modest business but didn't exactly set the box office on fire, its fanfic community is absolutely enormous. As of this writing, there are over 2,400 fanfics for the film on FanFiction.Net alone, almost as many as there are for Titanic (1997), a film that just about every woman who was a teenager or twentysomething in the late '90s has probably seen at least five times.
• Estrogen Brigade: On paper, this film is meant to be The Craft made for boys. In practice, between the handsome lead actors and the homoerotic barely-subtext, it's got a far larger female fanbase.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Let's face it: if you never had heard of this movie and came across it on cable or something, your first reaction would be "Oh great, yet another 'supernatural romance/thriller' for teenage girls hoping to cash in on the Twilight craze!". Then you'd discover the movie actually precedes it by two years.
• Ho Yay: Dear lord is there ever. This film rivals Top Gun in terms of unintentional gay overtones. From the all-male shower scene where we the viewer are treated to the sight of a dozen naked man asses, to the barely hidden levels of Unresolved Sexual Tension between the male leads, the film is a treasure trove of Ho Yay.
• Narm: Many examples, but the villain is this incarnate, with the "Little Miss Muffet" and "Ooooh, witchy!" quotes being especially cringe-worthy.
  • "How 'bout I make you my wi-otch?"
• Retroactive Recognition: This was an earlier role for Sebastian Stan, several years before his Star-Making Role as Bucky Barnes.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Has been derided for being a shameless rip-off of The Craft, but with the genders flipped.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There is potential behind the concept, it may make a pretty solid tv series than a movie. A pity that such a potential was squandered. Particularly, the levels of magical ability the characters are implied, or outright shown, to have are nothing compared to "ascension," which in turn increases dramatically if they are "willed" another's power. The final battle is mostly just bludgeoning each other with telekinesis.

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