The Forsaken

source: The Forsaken

I found this movie to have a solid story, sound performances, and believable execution. It has all the basic elements of a good vampyre movie, and for once, here's a movie which follows the basic rules of the genre. I realize any director can change the "Universal Monster Rules" any way he wishes, but as a fan of the genre, there are certain expectations one looks to have honored in a vampyre film. While it's not the best vampyre movie out there, it is highly entertaining, and deserves much better than the 5.whatever it got here at IMDb.com. If you liked this movie, I also recommend The Lost Boys, Underworld, Van Helsing, Near Dark, Modern Vampires (a horror comedy), My Best Friend is a Vampire (a horror comedy), and John Carpenter's Vampires. It rates a 7.8/10 from... the Fiend :.

this film has nothing good going for it!! the most creative scene and the most interesting of the whole film was in teh first 5 minutes when sean goes to pick up the car and from there it was all down hill. i had to force myself to not switch it off, i dont like quitting films half way through but i really really really wanted to on this one. the direction was atrociously bad, the camera work was mostly ok but the direction of the actors was terribly. it was a giant pile of w**k. the plot was dumb, and kept dragging out when it should have finished. if you cant make 87minutes with your plot, you change the plot to make it work for 87 minutes, you dont keep dragging it on and on by having someones car die or just have them conveniently wander off. it was a dumb dumb dumb film and i am glad it is over and i never have to watch it again.

What can I say? This is definitely one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It has no likable characters, a poor story and poor execution. SPOILERS The story suffers from a number of plot holes. Example, Nick has supposedly been tracking the vampire gang for months. He knows that they can only be killed by sunlight or decapitation, yet his only weapons are a handgun and a knife! He had plenty of time to pick up a bladed weapon suitable for decapitation, so why doesn't he have one? Plus, it is stated several times that the Forsaken can only be killed on hallowed ground. Yet they still need a human to drive them around in the day. So sunlight kills them anywhere? So when the head vampire dies at the end, it didn't need to be on hallowed ground? So the 'quest' to reach it was pointless. And yet again we have the 'dawn to mid-day in seconds' cliché found in so many vampire movies. My main reason for seeing this was Izabella Miko. The way she is shown on the forefront of the video cover suggests that she has a big part. Yet she is completely wasted as she spends 99% of the movie in shock. She is used in the film merely as a way to lure the vampires (yet another cliché- woman bitten by vampires who has a psychic link to them). Not to mention the gratuitous nudity which I despise. She deserves much better than this. The protagonists treatment of Megan (Izabella) is abhorrent and leaves the audience with no sympathy for them at all. I was really hoping that Nick would die and that is not right. We are supposed to cheer the 'heroes' on, not hate them. Avoid this movie like the plague.

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.

Complete waste of time. Horror movies are only good if they are well-made. This is not one of them. Bought this hunk of garbage at the store for $1.99 on a gamble. Well - I lost that one. I must have been influenced by the hot pic of the chick on the cover..but know what?? She didn't look anywhere NEAR that good in the movie. What a waste.

... but then what do you expect? It's a Vampire movie, it's about killing, eating and having fun. And quite frankly I had more fun with this movie than with most other movies I have seen lately. Not Oscar Material, but hey, it is definitely way better than other movies like Driven.

SUMMARY: B-movie. Men under 30 who consider themselves outsiders will dig this road trip to Hell. Others, pick another film. WHY I SAW IT: I'm too old for this film, but the young ladies in my local "Roswell" fan club wanted to see Brenden Fehr ("Roswell", "Final Destination") and Kerr Smith ("Dawson's Creek", "Final Destination"). WB fans, watch for the cameo by Sara Downing ("Courtney Banks" on "Roswell" and star of the upcoming TV series "Dead Last"). THE STORY: Ambitious, dutiful Sean is paid to drive a Mercedes sports car from L.A. to Miami. In this road movie, he encounters quirky characters in the deserts, canyons and plains of the Southwest. The pace picks up when he meets cynical slacker Nick and they rescue traumatized beauty Megan. The reluctant alliance of these mismatched people anchors the story as events go from disturbing to terrifying. IDEA CONTENT: None of the common Hollywood refusal to recognize evil as writer/director J.S.Cardone pits ordinary guys against vampires who once were human cowards who "saved their lives" by becoming demons. Even more loathsome are the human criminals who serve the vampires and disguise their crimes as those of serial killers. News-junkies will be reminded of American and Russian politicians who pose as friends of the common people. With their organized-crime partners, they trash the economy and society while putting the blame on "selfish consumers" and "greedy businessmen". Those who know mythology will recognize the classic sequence of Ominous Foreshadowing, Leaving Home, Wilderness Journey, Crisis of Decision, the Mighty Action, and Personal Transformation. ESTHETICS: Slightly-flawed, down-to-earth script skillfully alternates horror with humor, terror with sexiness. Well-chosen music. Several beautiful actresses. DIRECTION: Downplays charisma in favor of realistic performances from well-cast actors. EDITING: Muffled sound in one scene. Well-paced, well-cut action. The night chase by two carloads of vampires stands out. WHY IT'S RATED "R": Four-letter words. Topless and * starlets. Merciless bloody violence, not graphic enough for the splatterfans. MY VOTE: For this subgenre and intended audience, 8 on a scale of 10.

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...

Spoilers herein. There are some plot elements of this film you should look out for in the beginning. Our hero, Sean -- probably gay -- is the trailer editor for Canyon Films (which you can see from the door). In real life, that is Conrad Hall's company, the two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer. Hall won for `Butch and Sundance,' and `American Beauty' and is a giant talent in Hollywood. So right away, you know a key awareness in this film is religious issues associated with light and heartbeats (in film terms: lighting and editing). Sean is supposed to be editing the trailer for `Kid Zombie,' (an obvious reference to the target audience) and takes a week away to attend his sister's wedding on the other coast. It is a crude framing, at about the low level of skill shown elsewhere in the film, but very clearly deliberate. The notion is that this film is a film about flash editing, and the controller of that heartbeat is INSIDE the film. That's why we get the disappearing girls in the corvette, which can be explained no other way than the magic of immersion, rather like entering Toontown. The best of the Freddy Kreuger films used this device as well. So did the recent `Cut.' Actually lots of recent horror. Some pretty rich stuff to play with such framing, but here only superficially tapped: the telepathy; the film-as-taxidermy `holy ground' at the end; the entering of yet another world (inside the vampire world which is inside the film world) to raid the redneck dunebuggy campground, the taking of the "heart" out of that world... Anyway, since the film is about editing, one can comment that though the kids making it try valiantly, this film would have been improved enormously if the editor had been, well, not on vacation. Miko is a mere mewing mammary manikin, but Phina Oruche (alone in the cast) does some real acting. Her job is to draw victims away from the light, and also serve as the errant Crusader's concubine. Note the new origin of vampires this film creates: Cursed crusaders, which makes Phina's malevolent Moor meaningful. (How long will it be before Hollywood allows Arab girls to be sex objects?) With a little bit of such work on the part of the viewer, this film can be watchable, and more.