Forsaken

A young man driving cross-country (Kerr Smith) picks up a hitchhiker (Brendan Fehr) who turns out to be a fearless vampire killer; the driver is reluctantly dragooned into his new friend’s crusade to “break the bloodline” by killing a vampire (Johnathon Schaech) in a rusty old Dodge Charger. Writer/director J.S. Cardone’s supernatural thriller is grimy and brutal, with enough spurting, seeping and oozing blood to transfuse a whole season’s worth of patients on E.R. As usual, there’s a line of pseudo-medical mumbo-jumbo describing vampirism as a virus dating back to the 2nd century, but also as usual in films like this, the “rules” are broken when it suits the moment. Cardone’s style with the unpleasant material is as ruthlessly cut-and-slash as that of his blood-sucking villains.