Borderland
BY Ryan LaMarca / 2008-04-05
It's torture porn Mexican style in "Borderland," another movie from the After Dark Horrorfest. "Borderland" follows in the style of other horror movies such as the "Hostel" and "Saw" franchises where the horror comes from the disturbing visuals brought about through intense torture sequences. Anything you can imagine happens in "Borderland," including the severing of many body parts, including but not limited to arms, legs, and heads, as well as Mexican folklore rituals involving human sacrifices. That's the main bulk of the torture right there: the extremely brutal inflictions imposed on one prisoner in order to perform a human sacrifice. This movie is not for the weak of stomach.
Based on true events, a trio of American college students head down to the Mexican side of the border for a weekend of drugs, sex, alcohol, and an all-around good time. After getting high on exotic mushrooms, one boy, Phil (Rider Strong), wanders off into the streets alone and is kidnapped by a sacrificial cult. Realizing that their friend is missing and probably kidnapped, Ed (Brian Presley) and Henry (Jake Muxworthy) enlist the aid of a local policeman whose partner was murdered by the same group, as well as a young bartender girl named Valeria to find out where their poor friend is before they kill him as a sacrifice.
Most of the film is used as filler material showing the kids going and getting stoned, wasted, or what have you and that takes up about the first fifty minutes of the movie, and it's incredibly boring. When I go to see a horror movie, I don't want to go see a bunch of college kids go around doing drugs and party, because I just don't care. I want what I came to see: horror. It reminded me of a bad "Friday the 13th" movie in regard to the filler scenes, only "Borderland" does an even worse job about making it boring. The movie also features some of most obnoxious and repulsive characters who I just deeply wanted to get rid of as fast as possible. How incredibly retarded the decisions these kids make is beyond me to the point that it's almost pathetic. Here's my advice about what to do about that: fast forward. If get easily bored during this kind of stuff, then just skip past it, and get to the nitty gritty.
Boy, is this movie brutal. And I mean absolutely brutal and the torture scenes are just downright weird, even compared to the likes of "Hostel" and "Saw." These include the likes of man-on-man bloody kisses, cutting out eyeballs, and decapitations. Aside from the horrific torture scenes, "Borderland" does do a good job of having a consistent story and a decent plot that was able to hold my attention and keep me interested. The only character who I actually liked was Ulises the cop who I actually felt sorry for after realizing how much this guy had to go through and how he is willing to risk his own life to help these kids out with their problems. One other final note would be the appearance of Sean Astin (Sam from "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) who plays Randall, the American member of this occultist group. His character is so strange that it's almost ludicrous how crazy this group of villains is. Astin does a great job of playing up the part and is great this time around as a villain.
Finally, Lionsgate has decided to throw on some additional bonus material with these DVDs. Well, don't get too excited. Just with the other Horrorfest DVDs, we still get the Miss Horrorfest Contest webisodes. Back in October of 2007, After Dark Films held this contest in which eight girls would compete for the title of Miss Horrorfest. These gothic girls would take part in various activities such as horror decorating, carving jack o'lanterns, surviving in haunted houses, and so forth. The six episodes combined last only around twenty minutes so it's not that big of a deal. I think some kind of featurette about the Horrorfest in general would have been a nice bonus feature for these releases, but they must really like this Miss Horrorfest contest, instead. I guess they just didn't want to pay anything extra for bonus material. In addition, there are two new featurettes included. One of them is about the production of the movie with director Zev Berman, which is actually pretty interesting to watch. The other is a bit more distrubing. It was about the events on which the movie is based and actually shows real footage from the investigation. I had a hard time watching this one and found it a bit too strong to take in.
"Borderland" is one of the better installations from the After Dark Horrorfest and I was genuinely pleased by how it turned out. If you're in the mood for a different kind of torture porn film, you can watch this one and see how the Mexicans do it. Be warned: there are a few instances in the movie with extensive subtitles, in case you can't stand watching movies with subtitles. Overall, it's a pretty creepy movie and the fact that it was based on true life events just makes it so eerie, almost to the point of actually being scary. "Borderland" has a lot going for it, but it also has a lot going against it. This is definitely not for the faint of heart or those afraid of goat heads popping up, but horror fans will surely enjoy this one on at least some degree.
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