Just call him a member of Gen V.
A kinda-now, kinda-wow vampire for today, Johnathon Schaech‘s Kit in The Forsaken is a square-jawed, jeans-wearing, Metallica-song-singing bloodsucker who doesn’t look a day over 900.
“Eddie Munster was my inspiration,” Schaech jokes, referring to the one clue that he’s a bit older than he appears-a single gray streak in his dark hair. “No, really, the streak came from [director] Joe [J.S. Cardone]. He has this incredible gray hair, a chiseled jaw, he’s gaunt…he looks like a vampire. I said, ‘I want your hair for this role!’ He said, ‘How about one gray streak?’ It’s the only thing that shows aging as he goes along.”
In The Forsaken, Schaech‘s character Kit turned evil in the 11th century, when sold his soul to the Angel of Hell during the Crusades in exchange for eternal life. Now he’s become the leader of a gang of vamps who roam the Arizona desert viciously feeding on victims they find along desolate highways. Cross-country traveler Sean (Kerr Smith) finds himself caught up in a gory nightmare after he picks up hitchhikers Nick and Megan (Brendan Fehr and Izabella Miko) and winds up hunting down Kit and the gang.
Schaech isn’t the only one breaking dark tradition-this is no regular band of vampires, either. Forget pointy teeth, black cloaks and batty transformations. The Forsaken may have lots of blood, damp, creepy night scenes and vampire-y mind control, but these monsters are great-looking twentysomethings who look like they’d be more at home cruising Sunset Boulevard instead of Route 66.
“It’s definitely a twisted version,” says Schaech. “The director didn’t want to do the typical genre film. He wanted to make it more today, more real, questioning things that happen in society.”
Wait, a socially conscious vampire movie? C’mon, man, where are the fangs?
“They kill people with guns and stuff…so he can cover his tracks,” Schaech explains. “Kit’s a predator who’s been hunting for 900 years and the only way he can really cover his tracks is by bringing the modern day violence and gunplay into it, by being a thief or carjacker.”
The bloodletting bunch tries not to attract too much attention; few physical clues give them away other than their eyes, which glow when they feed (thanks to colored Visine-like drops that Schaech says “hurt like hell, but looked good”). That and Kit’s peculiar habit of injecting snake venom into his veins. “Hey, if you were 900, wouldn’t you be bored and want to try different drugs?” Schaech says, laughing. “Let’s keep the party going, right?”
Schaech claims to have gotten the role of Kit thanks to his part in Jennifer Love Hewitt‘s short-lived Fox series, Time of Your Life. He’s one of the few Forsaken cast members not currently on a WB network show, although, he says, “I used to live with a 19-year-old, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer used to be on all the time.” (Before you jump to conclusions, the 19-year-old was the sister of his fiancée, Christina Applegate–the two are getting married in October.) “Actually, I think Buffy could kick my ass!”
The Forsaken opens Friday, April 27.
Read a review of The Forsaken.
