The Forsaken

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

In the American popular imagination, between the East and West Coasts lies little but desolate highways and dangerous rural lands, each with a populace it's best to avoid. The Forsaken furthers this tradition with a new twist. The out-of-towner, Sean (Kerr Smith), isn't threatened by mad drivers, inbred residents, or psychotic hotel owners. Nope, he's got the undead to deal with.

Sean picks up a hitchhiker named Nick (Brendan Fehr) who later convinces him to help a troubled girl they spot at a bus stop. Megan (Izabella Miko) is mute and hysterical. The police are after her and, like Nick, she's in danger of becoming a bloodsucker unless they kill the head vamp. Sean just wants to get to Miami until an accidental bite draws him into the plan to kill Kit (Johnathon Schaech), a centuries-old evildoer whose band of merry men hide their vampiric credentials under the guise of highway hooliganism.

The Forsaken stars two TV heartthrobs. Kerr (Dawson's Creek) and Fehr (Roswell) both bring a prime-time lack of ambition to the movie. Oddly enough, this allows writer-director J. S. Cardone to spin an original vampire yarn that partakes of none of the usual bloodsucking clichés, just the teen horror film ones.