The Forsaken

By JOE LEYDON

Brendan Fehr, Izabella Miko and Kerr Smith star in "The Forsaken."

A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Screen Gems presentation of a Sandstone Pictures production. Produced by Carol Kottenbrook, Scott Einbinder. Directed, written by J.S. Cardone.
 
Sean - Kerr Smith
Nick - Brendan Fehr
Megan - Izabella Miko
Cym - Phina Oruche
Pen - Simon Rex
Ina - Carrie Snodgress
Kit - Johnathon Schaech
Teddy - Alexis Thorpe

 

Shamelessly derivative and exuberantly junky, "The Forsaken" is a brisk and bloody horror opus designed for a fleeting, smash-and-grab theatrical release and long shelf life on homevid. Writer-director J.S. Cardone ("Outside Ozona") stages some first-rate action set pieces and introduces a few fanciful twists to conventional vampire mythos. Even so, there's a generic feel to most of the enterprise, and an annoying inattentiveness to narrative coherence in the final reels. Chalk it up as a middling B-pic that, with a bit more wit and style, could have been at least a cult item.

Kerr Smith ("Final Destination," TV's "Dawson's Creek") capably tackles lead role of Sean, assistant editor for an L.A. production company that, judging from the posters on display, has strong ties to Troma Pictures. Eager to attend his sister's wedding in Miami, but unable to afford a plane ticket, Sean takes a job driving a vintage Mercedes from California to Florida.

But out in the Arizona desert, Sean blows a tire and loses his wallet. Despite having been warned not to pick up hitchhikers, he reluctantly gives a ride to a seemingly aimless slacker, Nick (Brendan Fehr), who agrees to pay for gas.

At a roadside diner, Nick, a singularly cynical conversationalist, says he likes his steak very, very rare. Latter quirk is only the most obvious indication that Nick isn't all that he seems. When But it isn't until the two guys come across a dazed, confused and frightfully disheveled young woman, Megan (Izabella Miko), that the hitchhiker begins to disclose his true colors.

In a seedy hotel, Nick strips Megan, checks her body for telltale marks, dumps her into a bathtub -- and pumps her full of sedatives. "She's got a blood disorder," Nick evasively explains. Pressed, he reveals the awful truth: She was bitten by a vampire, and will turn into a full-fledged bloodsucker if Nick doesn't "kill the source" of her infection. And how does Nick know? Well, you see ... he's a budding vampire himself.

But wait, there's more: Since Megan bit Sean's hand while he was restraining her in the bathtub -- Sean, too, is infected.

"Forsaken" disdainfully pooh-poohs the whole Dracula/Vlad the Impaler legend, and offers an alternative explanation for the existence of vampires, something involving eight French knights who gained immortality but lost their souls during an 11th-century Crusade. Fast-forward and we have Kit (Johnathon Schaech), one of the original godforsaken knights, leading a merry band of bloodsuckers throughout the American Southwest.

Kit is not your father's vampire -- instead of sleeping in a coffin, he spends his days in the trunk of a souped-up Dodge Challenger -- but he's still a traditionalist when it comes to exerting "telegenic" control over those he has bitten. And that's just fine with Nick: He figures to use Megan to draw Kit to sacred ground, which, of course, is the only place where a knight-turned-vampire can be slain.

Cardone adds genuinely clever touches to provide a rational underpinning for his fantastical melodrama. (At one point, Kit explains that he's able to delay his own transition to vampirism by taking drugs originally concocted by AIDS researchers.) During the last third of pic, however, niceties such as logic are tossed out the window like empty beer cans chucked from a speeding Challenger. Nick, Sean and Megan wind up at a remote store run by a shotgun-wielding matron (Carrie Snodgress), to take a last stand against Kit and his sexy disciple (Phina Oruche). What happens next is, at best, only sporadically comprehensible, suggesting that way too much got left on the cutting room floor.

Fehr ("Roswell")hits an effective balance of sarcasm and desperation as the peripatetic vampire hunter. And Schaech manages to be aptly larger than life without undue scenery chewing. As Megan, Polish-born Miko spends much of the pic's first half in various stages of undress -- she's introduced while taking a shower and scrubbing her ample, blood-smeared breasts. She doesn't have much dialogue, and her performance is scarcely better than a good try, but she provides sufficient eye candy to please many in pic's target demographic.

"The Forsaken" obviously was shot on a limited budget -- a climactic fiery explosion is notably cheesy -- but that somehow enhances its minor charms as a freewheeling exploitation pic.

Camera (color), Steven Bernstein; editor, Norman Buckley; music, Johnny Lee Schell, Tim Jones; music supervisor, Alex Patsavas; production designer, Martina Buckley; sound (Dolby Digital), George Burton Goen II; assistant director, Sholto Roeg; second unit director, Michael Cardone; casting, Ferne Cassel. Reviewed at AMC Studio 30, Houston, April 26, 2001. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 90 MIN.