Last night's viewing was
The Forsaken Yet another modern reworking of the vampire tale
The basic plot is that Sean is working as a movie trailer editor in California and takes time off to deliever a very nice car (BMW) to Florida, to coincide with his sister's wedding. Along the way he gets a flat and looses his wallet, so he has to spend the night ina nowhere town in the middle of the desert. Leaving town the next day, he's approach by a hitch=hiker (Nick) whom he relunctantly agrees to drive for a ways. Stopping at a resturaunt, they notice a girl who looks sick or drugged. Nick recognizes something special in her and insist they grabe her and take her to a hotel. Turns out, as Nick reveals to Sean, she has been bitten by a Vampire and will soon become one if the original vampire can be killed, Unfortunately, now Sean has been bitten by the girl so he will become a vampire as well if they don't track down and kill the original. So, off the go, using the drugged up girl as physhic bait for the head vampirem trying to find some holy ground to kill him on...all before Sean becomes a vampire, too..
Well, story was, this was a very weak movie. The borrowed liberally from a number of sources, most notably from John Carpenter's "Vampires" that there is a phsychic link between vampire and victim and that he will use that link to try to find her and the good guys can use that as bait. Also, the 'turn' that takes several days to a week to accomplish. Even having Sean bit by the girl and Nick being willing to let the girl die to get to the head vamp. A bit from Highlander about only being able to kill on Holy Ground (and I think someone mentioned slicing off heads at one point) The rest they hodge-podged a mess together. The history of vampires is that they can all be traced back to eight warriors in the crusades who made a deal with the Angel of Death after a battle and drunk the blood of one of their comrades to seal the deal. OK, not bad. However! From the supernatural back story, they keep calling it an 'infection' and treating it with drugs like it's a normal disease. The mix-match between supernatural (angel of death, phychic link) and natural (treatable disease) showed more a lack of thinking the whole thing through than anything else. Just sloppy writing.
The characters weren't much to speak of, Sean never became sympathetic enough to really feel for te bnad turn his life took, the girl was just druggeed for about the first four fifths of the movie so, again, who cares? Nick is actually pretty cool, but the head vampire did *not* come across like the 17 century old uber-baddie he should've been. (like "Modern Vampires", the big bad evil head vampire just didn't measure up to expectations)
There is some beatiful SouthWest sceneray, but this one is for vampophiles only, because the story is not the best out there for modern retellings