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Popular Culture Review
version of the road film vampires that have seamlessly melted into society by cov
ering up their kills in the guise of suicides, murders, and drive-by shootings. Awash
in the blood that drives its color palette, The Forsaken posits that vampires need to
kill their victims by cutting their throats, shooting them, or simply plunging a fist
through one’s chest to pull out the heart. Unlike others of the genre, the vampires
then lap up the blood much as a panther would. As Cardone notes, “They spill it and
then they take it like a predator, like a cat would off an animal (Maccarillo 63).”
Cardone has also chosen to include a mythological basis for his vampires’
origins. About halfway through the film Nick (Brendan Fehr), the film’s youthful
but road-weary vampire hunter, tells Sean (Kerr Smith), the driver who has given
him a lift, how the vampire Nick is tracking came into being. On the battlefields of
the Crusades,
eight knights made a deal with Abadon, the angel from the bottomless pit,
who historically roams battlefields in search of souls. These eight knights
made a pact with this demon, and to seal it they killed and drank the
blood of a ninth. Then, they went into caves at night and came out during
the day, and once they saw each other, they were so ashamed of what they
had done that they couldn’t stand the sight of each other or anything in
daylight (62).
Aghast at what they had done, the knights dispersed to different continents so
they would not gaze upon each other. By present day, there are only four Forsaken
left, two in Europe and two in North America. Needless to say, the primary way to
dispatch the Forsaken is to expose them to sunlight.
Unlike the other films discussed here, however, Cardone’s creation tale is then
filed away somewhere and makes little contribution to the remainder of the plotline.
Carpenter’s Valek must seek the crucifix used in the inverse exorcism, Vlad’s re
birth carries out the prophecy of his birth, and Dracula/Judas finds himself hung
again to die from exposure to the sunlight. The death of lead vampire Kip (Johnathon
Schaech) and the members of his coven in The Forsaken has little to do with the
story of how the vampires resulted from the bargain with Abadon, except that they
die from exposure to sunlight as do most film vampires since Hammer’s Dracula.
The fact that these eight vampires are knights suffering from remorse going back
to the time of the Crusades has nothing to do with Kip’s depiction. Indeed, he is
drawn as a shameless, immoral, modern-day outlaw with a fondness for the hiphop and speed metal music that make up the film’s score. Ultimately, the mythol
ogy of the eight knights is an add-on to the plot that Cardone fails to exploit.
In retrospect, we see these films have chosen to incorporate their origin stories
in different ways. When the story is emphasized as part of the overall narrative or