ShangLuda Admirable film.

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

bowmanblue 'Compact' is the word I'd use to describe Borderland. It doesn't offer anything revolutionary which will blow your mind, but, if you're a fan of the genre, you should find it satisfying.It follows the (familiar) story of X good-looking young Americans, travelling to X and running into trouble in the form of X. Sometimes these packs of good-looking young Americans are girls, sometimes boys, other time a mixed group. Sometimes they travel to a remote town in America, sometimes a remote town in Europe. Once they get to where they're going, they run into trouble in the form of zombie/vampires/ghosts/rednecks/cannibals - choose your 'nasty.' In this instance, three lads travel to Mexico and get mixed up with... well, you'll have to watch it to find out.Like I say, the story is pretty generic. I've seen plenty of these sorts of movies (you can probably tell by my cynical tone), but this one is pretty reasonable. The protagonists aren't (completely) unlikeable, don't do (too many) stupid things and you can basically root for their plight.If you like this sort of film, give it a go. Trust me, there are many worse than this (and I've sat through almost every last one of them).

loomis78-815-989034 Three high school friends head to Mexico in search of women and a lot of drinking before they start college. Henry (Muxworthy) is your typical A-hole, urging his virgin friend Phil (Strong) to go get laid and making fun of his other friend Ed (Presley) who wants to do volunteer work and help others. Henry makes unenlightened statements like "Fuck the Poor" and the audience can't wait for him to die. Phil takes the stupid advice and gets abducted by a devil cult that plans on sacrificing him to their God. When Ed and Henry go to the authorities for help, they learn that the cult is also drug traffickers so no help will be coming. The two friends join up with a local woman Ed has fallen for named Valeria (Higareda) and an ex-cop (Damian Alcarzar) whose partner was brutally killed by the cult in the opening scene of the film, to try and rescue Phil. 'Borderland' tries to disguise that it isn't a torture porn movie but in the end that is what it is. Very little background is given about the cult so the motives are unknown. They're really just a bunch of thugs who torture and kill for the sake of it, which is how the script makes them appear. The movie is successful at building a sense of dread, but Writer/Director Zev Berman is more interested in making the audience squirm at the violence and torture than building any real suspense or fear. Disgusting set pieces is what is delivered from the unwatchable cop torture that begins the movie to the fate of Phil's character. The film is well made and has a good cast, it is the script and film makers that fail to make this anything scary. This is for fans of torture porn only.

t_atzmueller For those familiar with the case of the Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo and the „Matamoros"-killings, you might probably agree that it had been one of the most bizarre and shocking cases from that period in time. It had everything that would eventually make a riveting movie: crime, drug-dealer cartels, black magic (a hotchpotch of Christianity, Voodoo and Palo Mayombe), human sacrifice and more sadism then the average mind would feel comfortable with. Having read a fair share about the case, I had waited and rooted for an adaptation and this adaptation came 2007 with "Borderland".Naturally, in times of "Saw", "Turistas" and similar "Torture-Porn", making a straight thriller or Slasher would not suffice (nor would it have done reality justice). "Borderland" starts promising, suspenseful and very brutal. Then it moves into familiar territory: a group of party-hungry American youngsters go across the border and soon fall into the crowd of the bad guys.In essence, to make a cut above the rest, the movie would have had to concentrate on the antagonists rather than the tourists (all of which are portrayed as stereotypical and, concerning acting skills, forgettable as can possibly be, I might add). Indeed, "Borderland" had a colorful and interesting band of antagonists, like the creepy Gustavo (Marco Bacuzzi), tattooed cult-leader Santillan (Beto Cuevas) or the menacing "Ghost Rider" (Wilebardo Bucio), who appears in a few scene and is never really seen again. Sadly, the movie never digs deeper into those characters, giving us no background story, in the end killing them all off rather unspectacular.What's left is an average, run-of-the-mill torture-porn with a few grisly effects, no more than many other "Hostel"-clones and many wasted opportunities. Hence, we'll have to wait for the movie that will tackle the horrible story of "Matamoros" adequately.4/10 points is the maximum I can give for this. A note and recommendation to those interested in the "Matamoros"-case would be "Perdita Durango". Though the film isn't actually based on the crime itself, Javier Bardem plays a Palo Mayombe priest-cum-gangster, that comes much closer to the Santillan of "Borderland)

poe426 One of the most disturbing things about BORDERLAND is that the real life events upon which it's based are even MORE shocking than what's shown in the movie. (Which brought to mind the grisly WONDERLAND, with Val Kilmer as pornformer John Holmes: the actual crime scene video taken by the police in both cases is featured on the dvds. The horrors in the fictional versions pale by comparison.) BORDERLAND, in its depictions of depravity (which are, mercifully, brief), also calls to mind Charles Bowden's chronicle of narco carnage, the nonfiction book, MURDER CITY. Taken hand in hand, it's easy to equate one with the other. Read the book, see the movie; it's out there...