The Forsaken (2001)

At the time of the first great religious Crusade in the eleventh century, there was a horrifying siege at Antioch. During the first day of battle, the Turks slaughtered two hundred French Knights in a merciless bloodbath. By nightfall, snow had begun to fall and only nine men survived, doomed to perish if left exposed to the elements.

In the dead of night Abaddon, the angel of hell, appeared in their midst. According to Medieval legend, Abaddon visited battle sites in his suit of impenetrable black armor, looking for weak souls to steal and return to Hell with him.

Abaddon made the nine knights an offer for eternal life. Eight of the men accepted and sealed the pact by murdering the one knight who refused and drinking his blood. But when morning came and the sun rose in the heavens, they felt a terrible shame and ran from each other's sight, hiding in caves until night had fallen. From then on they were doomed to roam the earth alone, after dark, plagued by an unquenchable thirst for blood. In claiming their victims, their curse spread like a plague to everyone they bled. They became known as The Forsaken.

The first of the original eight cursed knights was hunted down and killed during the Spanish Inquisition, but not before he told his terrible story to the grand inquisitor, Don Fernando de Guevera. Over the past five hundred years three other forsaken knights have been dispatched, the most recent in Paris in 1967.

But four of them remain. Two are said to be in Africa or Eastern Europe. The other two roam the deserted highways of the United States, claiming new victims daily. The only way for the newly infected to cure themselves is by killing their host before they turn--it's a heinous and frightening race against time that most of them are doomed to lose.

---