Such a frustrating disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I've seen worse John Carpenter ripoffs, but this one is pretty blatant. It didn't even really bother ripping off one of Carpenter's better movies, which is kind of perplexing. Still, it was watchable, despite the director's best attempts to drive me off.The Forsaken stars two TV actors alternately chasing after and being chased by a vampire. The vampire is actually one of "the forsaken", a group of blah blah blah, who cares. Yes, there a bit of back story that sets straight all the incorrect vampire myths, tells us their weakness (sunlight), and the rules (must be killed on holy ground). Strangely, if they must be killed on holy ground, I don't understand why they care about sunlight. If sunlight can kill them (they hide during the day), then why do they need to be killed on holy ground? Do they die in sunlight, then instantly come back? Who knows. It's a bizarre plot hole that the director never sought to explain.Like Near Dark, which it also rips off, the vampires are updated to modern times. They use guns to kill people, hide in cars during the daylight hours, etc. It was fresh when Kathryn Bigelow did it, back in the mid 1980s. 15 years later, it's not so fresh.The soundtrack was detestable (full of Nu Metal), but, luckily, most of the music only played for a few seconds, before it faded out. I had blocked out memories of that era, and I resent being forced to experience it again. Without the music, this movie might have gotten a 6/10, but I kind of doubt it.Should you watch this? Sure, I guess. If you're obsessed with vampires, want to watch eye candy prance around, and you miss early 2000s Nu Metal. Otherwise, I'd say... skip it. It's not exactly bad, but there's nothing to recommend. Just stick to Near Dark, Blade, Vampires, or even Anne Rice's melodramatic soap opera, Interview With The Vampire.

Best write a review before this movie escapes my memory and dissolves with the passing time. Sean (Kerr Smith) works in Hollywood as film editor (mainly preparing trailers) and as such isn't exactly overflowing with cash. Hence when he lacks funds to attend his sister's wedding in Florida he decides to take up an offer by a repo office to drive a classic Mercedes to Miami. Main two rules - no hitchhikers and no reckless driving. In movie logic - those are the two rules that will definitely be broken during the course of the movie. Even more so that along the way he picks up a bum vampire killer called Nick (Brendan Fehr) and a catatonic chick Megan (Izabella Miko). Which only puts him high on the feeding list of a gang of bloodthirsty vampires led by Kit (Johnathon Schaech)...The scriptwriter tried to input some new life into the whole vampire genre by introducing a new myth concerning their creation (connected with the crusades) as well as giving it a great backdrop for prospective sequels (with three more 'original' vampires waiting to be vanquished. Trouble is that the movie itself is so cliché ridden that the freshness just isn't there. Actingwise all the people in this movie do a decent job and have a cool enough feel to them that it makes the flick enjoyable. But the dialogue and direction of "The Forsaken" is very traditional horror filmmaking (with no real atmosphere behind it) and that in itself makes it a competently done, but forgettable experience. Additionally they are no real action or horror scenes which really stand out and in general you feel more like you are being served a pilot of a television series than a movie itself.The biggest fault I can find in this movie is the character of Megan, who gets involved in the plot for no real purpose, sits around catatonic for most of the movie and doesn't even have a romance with the hero. After all this she just walks away in the penultimate scene never to be heard of again. Totally pointless character played by a passable Izabella Miko (not too pretty and does nothing with her character to make her memorable - given she was supposed to lie around motionless for the majority of this movie). Much more eye-catching was the vampire Cym (Phina Oruche) who must have one of the most sensual lips I have ever seen in cinema...

Vampires have certainly come a long way over the course of cinematic history, indeed textual history as a whole. What started off as a secluded and rich count living in a massive castle in Eastern Europe has gradually become less and less as the years have worn on. Eventually, vampires would be of Hispanic decent as seen in From Dusk Till Dawn and of African American decent as seen in the Blade films, but there are probably earlier still examples of these two types. In The Forsaken, the vampires are of the teenage variety – a far cry to what vampires as a whole began as which makes the idea of these different, post-modern 'types' of vampires look a little silly and like a gimmick. There cannot be much surprise then, when The Forsaken comes across as something equally so.But there has to be some honesty about this comment and that is that I was enjoying The Forsaken up until a certain point. In the long run, the film is nothing special and when essence of familiarity and formula begin to creep into a film that few will even have heard of, let alone seen; you know it's struggling. Although the film falls into that genre of horror, you feel it does less so for the fact that it is genuinely creepy and more so for the fact that mere vampires play an important role in its plot line. The narrative drive for the film sees one of very few vampire leaders left amongst them hiding out in dustbowl America – it is this lead vampire, who has a pretty nasty back-story from over in Europe, that Nick (Fehr) is charged with hunting down and killing for sake of all mankind. Innocent bystander Sean (Smith), who is on his way to his sister's wedding, gets caught up in this extremely small scale war and will suffer as a consequence.I know the cliché is that you shouldn't pick up hitchhikers and films like The Forsaken really hammer home that idea. Yes, you don't know if they're crazy but it could be worse, they could be the harbinger of a story revolving around the apocalypse. If Wolf Creek told us not to hitchhike because you never know who's picking you up and The Hitcher told us not to pick them up in the first place, then The Forsaken has an equal message of morality emphasising what not to do if someone wants a ride – notice Sean's weakness was the offering of money by the third party; is this a further hidden message about the sin of greed? But this adventure will not be so easy for vampire hunter Nick, who reveals himself at a nicely timed point in the film amongst some nasty scenes involving a girl that is 'turning'. Nick may be way too young for my liking to be such the veteran vampire hunter he says he is we'll all have to go along with it. It turns out these nasty caricatures of teenagers who have been going around teasing Sean and Nick over uncharged car batteries and causing carnage at stoner beer picnics are indeed all part of a gang that fronts this lead vampire that needs to be gotten rid of.But while this idea for a story feels old and outdated, it is remarkable how ordinary the execution for it here actually feels. The idea of a post-apocalyptic world is a scary one and the scenes in which mere mortals are on screen are sparse and over quickly, one or two of which meet their grizzly demise in double quick fashion – the best being the state trooper, a figure of authority and power dispatched relatively easily by the antagonistic vampires. This helps build whatever atmosphere the film needs to make us mere mortals look smaller and less powerful; a race that would not win the war if that's what it came to. But The Forsaken is a film whose best scares are incidences like a particularly large spider creeping towards a young and defenceless girl in a compromising situation as well as the lead villain using a snake to bite his arm in order to achieve some sort of 'high'. The film is all very low key and should not be viewed as an exercise in scares.Along with this, the evil-doers in The Forsaken are either established as individuals of a French (European to the wider extent of things) decent or are black females as seen in the case of Cym (Oruche). It's this biting and somewhat childish way of pointing the finger at Europe as the source for the evil-doing and casting a black, British girl for the role of the chief villain's blood hungry, seductive girlfriend. The Forsaken is a film that starts out promising; gradually gets sillier and then ends with an explosion before establishing a disappointing new order in which we discover nothing really has been achieved. But at least the film moves on the character of the vampire as a whole: they can attain a mere rush over a poisonous snake bite to the arm but when it comes to sunlight, they're still screwed. With this in mind, the sequel might as well have vampires whom can withstand a machine gun clip to the torso but have a character throw a piece of garlic at them, and they run scared.

You know, sometimes you'll see a B-movie horror flick where the story really grabs you and you think, man, if they just had a better budget, cast, effects, this really could have been something. Then in turn you'll see a movie with a decent cast, director and money to spend, but its obvious the script was written two days before shooting began.I'm sorry to say that the Forsaken is more of the latter and less of the former. For us boys, there's plenty of explosions, car chases, the odd bit of nudity, but the plot is so wafer thin it falls to pieces at the first breeze.As a 'popcorn' 'no-brainer' of a movie it's pleasant enough, the cast perform well with what little they've been given, but for me personally the ending felt like it had been 'tacked on' in a rush. That and the fact the whole thing feels like a marketing ploy to earn a sequel spoiled it for me really. Still if you're at a loose end and you like your horror flicks might be worth a watch for Johnathon Schaech (Star turn in my opinion) as the head vampire. Just don't get your expectations up.