Borderland

Review by: The Bone Breaker

Borderland was the 5th film shown in the "8 Films to Die For" 2007 After Dark Horror Festival.

The back of the DVD packaging states, "Although this is inspired by a true story, the events and characters depicted in this motion picture are fictitious." Huh?!?

A few days ago, I discovered that my neighbor is a voracious horror fan!
[living next to him for almost a year now, I am not sure how we never connected, other than the brief conversations here and there - mainly about tattoos, as he is a tattoo artist - we never realized our mutual obsession until last week] He arrived home, as I was getting my mail, and he had a lot of [tattoo] stuff to carry in, so I offered my help - as I entered his abode, I was treated to shelves and shelves of movies [easily 1,000+] I of course noticed the horror titles and to cut a long story short, I spent about an hour over there, discussing horror movies. He kept offering me movies to watch, which I've either already seen or already own myself. That is until I noticed the "8 Films to Die For" section - I mentioned that I had never seen any of those, and he suggested that I start off with this one. . .

As I mentioned above, the film is loosely based on a true story about a leader of a cult who practiced human sacrifice - it sort of has a Hostel /Turistas vibe to it.

In the beginning, the film opened strong, with two police officers entering an abandoned home looking for evidence of a cartel. What they find are tarot cards strewn about, blood, and a human jaw bone [amongst other things] While searching the house, the detectives separate. One is then ambushed and the other is forced to watch his partner be tortured and ultimately killed. [he is left alive to tell the police force to stay away]

Jump to a year later, where 3 friends [in Galveston, TX] decide to cross the border into Mexico looking to have a good time. When one of them goes missing, the other two began a search for their friend, which brings them across the path of the aforementioned blood cult. . .

After such a strong opening, the film seemed to take a while to get back up to speed, but once it did, it was worth the wait. [pretty much from the rooftop scene on, the film is worthwhile]
Another thing to note was Sean Astin's performance ~ he played a great bad guy!

While this film was watchable, it certainly wasn't "to die for" I guess that I was just expecting greater things from these series of films.

Anyone else out there have any other suggestions from these series of films?
[my neighbor has them all]

Jason