The Covenant (PG-13, 2006)

The four coolest and most intimidating boys at Spenser Academy in Ipswich, Massachusetts share a secret: As legend has it, their ancestors were witches, accused and abused at the Salem trials, and the boys have powers. Caleb (Steven Strait) realizes that using their powers too much is dangerous: Using them too much in fact can deplete them, which happened to Caleb's 44-year-old father. So he starts to warn his friends -- Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Reid (Toby Hemingway), and Tyler (Chace Crawford) -- to cut back on the use of their powers. A new student, Chase (Sebastian Stan), insinuates himself into the boys' group. He seems naïve and in need of protection, which Caleb offers, but it turns out Chase is the descendent of yet another witchy family, and means to suck the power out of all the other boys.

More nonsensical than scary, THE COVENANT conjures a cautionary tale for prep school pretties. Chase reframes the good-bad dynamic in Ipswich: No longer is the bossy daredevil Pogue the reigning terror in town. Now Chase poses a real menace, not only to Caleb, but to all righteous witchy types, for he'll soon need to suck up their powers as well. Besides, Chase starts tormenting Caleb's crush, Sarah (Laura Ramsey), with spells and spiders, so that Caleb just has to take a stand. Or rather, he has to engage in a knockdown, drag-out hellfires-a-blazing battle at the old estate, where he and Chase throw pitchforks and plows at one another while thunder crashes.

It's lots of noise for nothing. Though director Renny Harlin knows something about putting pretty kids in danger (he made the underappreciated Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors way back in 1988), here the effects look cheesy and the characters flummoxed by an incoherent script that mostly devises ways for them to throw one another against glass objects -- windows, mirrors, crates of bottles. And when that fails, they go back to leaping off cliffs.