THE FORSAKEN
Year: 2001
USA: Screen Gems
UK: Columbia Tristar Films
Cast: Kerr Smith, Brendan Fehr, A J Buckley, Izabella Miko, Johnathon Schaech, Phina Oruche, Matt Reid, Simon Rex, Alexis Thorpe, Carrie Snodgress, Ed Anders, Bert Emmett, Bryan Kirkwood, Ryan Shuck
Director: J S Cardone
Country: USA
UK: 90 mins
USA Rated: R for strong violence/gore, language and sexuality
UK Certificate: 18 contains frequent strong horror and violence and some coarse language
USA Release Date: 27 April 2001
UK Release Date: 7 September 2001
Synopsis
Driving from Los Angeles to Florida to deliver a vintage Mercedes and attend his sister's wedding, Sean (Kerr Smith) does the one thing he wasn't supposed to do - pick up a hitchhiker. And from that moment on, his cross country road trip is transformed into a surreal and blood-soaked nightmare.
Sean's new companion Nick (Brendan Fehr) is not the laid back, aimless traveler he seems. He is a Hunter. And his prey are the bloodletters, a roving band of forsaken youths who viciously feed on the hapless victims they find in the dead of night along deserted highways. In a word, vampires. Little does Sean know that Nick is suffering from a deadly "blood disease" and has been tracking the motley crew for several months. As the miles pass by with his strange new co-pilot, Sean encounters one dark and mysterious delay after another. It seems he's never going to make it to his sister's wedding...
When Sean and Nick pick up the dazed and frightened Megan (Izabella Miko), whom the killers had left for dead, she becomes a human lure, unfinished business that must be attended to. Sean is instantly drawn to her vulnerability and beauty. The stakes are raised when Sean himself is infected with the deadly virus. Nick continues to dodge Sean's questions but finally, after a heated argument, he is forced to tell Sean everything. The only cure for them is to kill the host organism, Kit (Johnathon Schaech) the vicious leader of the vampire gang. It's a deadly race against time, and if they fail, they will suffer the same fate as their enemies -- joining the ranks of the insatiable undead forever.
Today could be the last day of the rest of their lives.
...THE LEGEND OF THE FORSAKEN...
At the time of the first great religious Crusade in the eleventh century, there was a horrifying siege at Antioch. During the first day of battle, the Turks slaughtered two hundred French Knights in a merciless bloodbath. By nightfall, snow had begun to fall and only nine men survived, doomed to perish if left exposed to the elements.
In the dead of night Abaddon, the angel of hell, appeared in their midst. According to Medieval legend, Abaddon visited battle sites in his suit of impenetrable black armor, looking for weak souls to steal and return to Hell with him.
Abaddon made the nine knights an offer for eternal life. Eight of the men accepted and sealed the pact by murdering the one knight who refused and drinking his blood. But when morning came and the sun rose in the heavens, they felt a terrible shame and ran from each other's sight, hiding in caves until night had fallen. From then on they were doomed to roam the earth alone, after dark, plagued by an unquenchable thirst for blood. In claiming their victims, their curse spread like a plague to everyone they bled. They became known as The Forsaken.
The first of the original eight cursed knights was hunted down and killed during the Spanish Inquisition, but not before he told his terrible story to the grand inquisitor, Don Fernando de Guevera. Over the past five hundred years three other forsaken knights have been dispatched, the most recent in Paris in 1967.
But four of them remain. Two are said to be in Africa or Eastern Europe. The other two roam the deserted highways of the United States, claiming new victims daily. The only way for the newly infected to cure themselves is by killing their host before they turn--it's a heinous and frightening race against time that most of them are doomed to lose.