The Forsaken (film)

The Forsaken is a 2001 American horror film written and directed by J. S. Cardone, and starring Kerr Smith, Brendan Fehr, Izabella Miko, and Jonathan Schaech. The film follows a young film editor on a cross-country trip who comes across a hitchhiker and a disoriented young woman in the Arizona desert who are connected to a cult of vampires.

Plot
Sean is driving cross country from Los Angeles to his sister's wedding in Miami when he picks up Nick, a hitchhiker who happens to be a vampire hunter hunting a group of vampires led by Kit, one of the Forsaken; a group of French Knights of the First Crusade who made a pact with the fallen angel Abaddon to live forever. There were nine knights: eight were turned into vampires and became known as the Forsaken; the ninth was a sacrifice to Abaddon to seal the pact. Of the eight, four are dead, one is in Europe, one in Africa, and two in the United States (including the one Nick is tracking, Kit). Nick was bitten and "infected" by a vampire but, thanks to an antiviral drug cocktail, the vampire "virus" is kept at bay. Each of the Forsaken carry a unique strain of vampirism and killing the Forsaken kills the entire bloodline; killing all the vampires descended from it, and stopping anyone just bitten from turning, which is why Nick is hunting this particular Forsaken. He believes him to be the one that his bloodline is descended from and that if he kills him, he will be cured before he turns (as the drug cocktail eventually will lose effect). At first Sean is less than willing to indulge his new acquaintance; however, he is convinced after the two come across a disoriented young woman, Megan, at a diner, who was bitten by the vampires and left for dead. Nick also proves he is telling the truth by killing a vampire, Teddy, with exposure to sunlight.

Sean and Nick take Megan to their motel room, but she goes into a rage and bites Sean; they realize they must kill the Forsaken responsible to prevent Sean the virus from progressing. Forsaken can only be slain on hallowed ground, so the three head for a Spanish mission 60 miles away – chased by the vampires and their day driver Penn. After a battle on the road, Penn is killed and the car is running out of gas as its tank was shot so they are unable to reach the mission. They stop at a gas station where an old woman, Ina, lets them in. She shows them a newspaper connecting Megan to a bloodbath in Arizona; when Megan wakes up and is coherent enough to talk, she explains she was a victim of the vampires' bloodbath (led by Kit) and after Kit bit her he left Teddy to kill her, which she did not do. Kit and Cym then catch up to them and lay siege to the gas station.

Sean discovers a graveyard outside and Ina explains that it is an old Spanish graveyard that was never dug up, making the house hallowed ground and thus a suitable place to kill Kit. In the following battle, Sean blows off Cym's head with Ina's shotgun but both he and Nick are injured and Kit forces him to be his new day driver then goes after Ina and Megan. As Kit is about to kill them Sean drives his car through the gas station wall and pins Kit to the wall, hoping to hold him there until the sun rises. Kit pushes the car back when it runs out of gas due to the hole in the tank but Sean then shoots him, knocking him into a beam of sunlight and shoots him again when he manages to escape the light. As Kit starts to combust, Sean, Nick, Megan and Ina flee the gas station; Kit's explosive death ignites the gas. It seems Sean and Megan are finally cured of vampirism, however Nick is not cured as it turns out that the vampire who bit him is descended from the other Forsaken in the United States. Nick takes to the road to try to find and kill the other Forsaken, leaving a letter of thanks for Sean. Three months later, Sean catches up to him driving Kit's car and insists on helping, having discovered that the Forsaken is probably in Denver. The two set off for Denver.

Cast

 * Kerr Smith as Sean
 * Brendan Fehr as Nick
 * Izabella Miko as Megan
 * Johnathon Schaech as Kit
 * Phina Oruche as Cym
 * Simon Rex as Pen
 * Carrie Snodgress as Ina Hamm
 * Alexis Thorpe as Teddy
 * F. J. Flynn as Hoot
 * Sara Downing as Julie

Themes
Contemporary critics of the film have noted a homoerotic subtext between the film's two central male characters. In a 2013 retrospective on the film, the publication Culture Crossfire said of the film: "Twelve years later, there’s nothing about The Forsaken that’s particularly memorable other than the fact that it’s an in-denial coming out tale that just happens to have vampires."

Production
Director J.S. Cardone was influenced by Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Kathryn Bigelow's vampire film Near Dark (1987) when writing The Forsaken, and said he wanted to make a "road movie" with vampires. Kerr Smith was cast in the film based on his performance as Jack McPhee, a gay teenager on the network series Dawson's Creek; Brendan Fehr was cast based on his role in the sci-fi series Roswell. Cardone cast Izabella Miko in the role of Megan, who at the time was new to the film industry. To prepare for the role, Miko, who is originally from Poland, completed accent training in order to achieve an American accent.

The film was shot on location in and around Yuma, Arizona.

Reception
The Forsaken holds a 7% approval rating on the internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 54 reviews.

Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle said of the film: "Like the recent Dracula 2000, The Forsaken supplies its own twist, and also like that other film it comes as less of a surprise than a bewilderment. I'll refrain from spelling it out, though I'll note that the Crusades have something to do with it and it handily doubles as an AIDS metaphor. Who'da thunk it?" Entertainment Weekly also gave the film a negative review, calling it "startlingly amateurish."

Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave a middling review of the film, calling it a "reasonably smart generic hybrid," but that it "trots out its full arsenal of shock tactics far too early in the game and squanders the suspense it has accumulated." Wesley Morris of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "As anonymous vampire flicks go, The Forsaken is like a store-bought costume with plastic fangs collecting dust in a Wal-Mart "Everything Must Go" bin. Imagine a tributary of Dawson's Creek snaking into the cesspool area of the Styx, and you might be able to glean a vision of The Forsaken for yourself."

Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide called the film a "hip, revisionist horror picture, which borrows liberally — and cannily — from Near Dark and The Hitcher." Neil Smith of the BBC awarded the film three out of five stars, but noted that the film "plays down the more lurid aspects of the vampire legend—no fangs, crucifixes or silver bullets—in an attempt to free the genre from its gothic roots. The problem is he inadvertently removes everything that makes the horror genre fun."

Box office
The film opened at #8 at the North American box office making $3,020,159 USD in its opening weekend. The film lost money by 53 percent in box office earnings the following week causing the film to move a notch down to #9, it became a box office bomb as the film had plummeted to the 15th spot.