The Forsaken (2001)
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Cast: Kerr Smith, Brendan Fehr
Extras: Commentary Track, Featurettes, Theatrical Trailer, Deleted Scenes, Cast & Crew Info
Rating:

If you look under ’F’ in the horror DVD section of your favorite store, you’ll find two films starring Kerr Smith and Brendand Fehr – ’Final Destination’ and ’The Forsaken’. Take my advice, stick with ’Final Destination’. ’The Forsaken’ is a vampire film that offers a new take on the vampire origin story, but everything else is simply old news. Kerr Smith stars as a Sean, a young man hired to drive a car cross-country. While in the desert, he picks up the mysterious hitchhiker Nick (Brendan Fehr), and soon they are being chased by a gang of vampires.

’The Forsaken’ borrows heavily from ’The Lost Boys’ and ’Near Dark’, but doesn’t do justice to either of those films. Writer/director J.S. Cardone shows some visual skill in the way that ’The Forsaken’ is shot and edited (although, there are probably one too many psychedelic flashback scenes), but the film is incredibly poorly paced. The movie is simply repetitive and boring, and there are a great many scenes, which feel like padding. This film was presumably meant as a vampire/road-movie for Generation Y, but they should do themselves a favor and check out the aforementioned flicks, which inspired ’The Forsaken’.

Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment brings ’The Forsaken’ to DVD with a transfer which is letterboxed at 1.85:1 and has been enhanced for 16×9 TVs. The image is nearly perfect – very sharp and clear. As the film takes place in the desert, there is some subtle grain in some of the shots, but this is minor. The film has a colorful look and these colors translate well in this transfer. The audio here is a Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound mix, which comes across very well. There is a great deal of surround sound action and a nice degree of bass response. The dynamic range is impressive and the dialogue is always clear.

This DVD offers an audio commentary by J.S. Cardone, which is informative and interesting, but his chat isn’t scene specific enough. There are two 2-minute featurettes here, one focusing on actor Brendan Fehr, while the other takes a look at the cars from the film (I’m not making that up.). Three deleted scenes have been restored here — all being brief and not adding much new information. The theatrical trailer is included and has been letterboxed at 1.85:1. Finally, we have cast & crew bios.