Borderland (18)

Dir. Zev Berman, 101mins, USA, 2007

Cast: Brian Presley, Rider Strong, Jake Muxworthy, Beto Cuevas, Martha Higareda

Review by Daniel Laverick

The premise of Borderland is depressingly familiar - three American college students decide to go to Mexico for one last night of drunken debauchery before they go their separate ways. During the night, one of the friends disappears after getting into a car with a set of unsavoury Mexican gangsters. A frantic search ensues, leading to the discovery of an ancient cult intent on performing a human sacrifice – cue rescue mission.

Borderland has been heavily marketed as a film which sits alongside the likes of Hostel and Saw , which is understandable and makes sense when you take a glance at the film's synopsis. Personally, I'm not a fan of the lazy, paint by numbers torture porn films that have infected the horror genre of late, so my expectations weren't particularly high.

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by the approach taken by director Zev Berman. Borderland doesn't blindly subscribe to the genre conventions of the aforementioned films, it has a number of interesting qualities that make it well worth a watch, especially for those of you who have lost faith in the American horror film.

First of all, the audience is given time to invest in the three main protagonists without rushing headlong into the gore, which more often than not fails to raise any sort of emotion in the average spectator – if we don't know the character having his head torn off, why would we care?

The opening third of the film is devoted to just that – good old fashioned characterisation. We glean an insight into the dynamics of the relationship between the three friends and their motivations for having one last wild night in a lawless Mexican border town. We get to know and care about the potential victims before they encounter Mexico's satanic underworld and gain an understanding of the type of people they are beyond the usual clichéd horror film victim.

The scenes of gore are fairly gruesome, but they never seem to be over the top, or there just to please the gore hounds. The violence in the film has its place and a relevance to the narrative, so its extreme nature isn't problematic or pornographic.

According to the mini documentary that accompanies the film on the DVD, the story of Borderland is (very) loosely based on real events that occurred in 1989. The documentary is an interesting accompaniment to the film and in some ways is actually more unnerving to watch than the main feature itself. There's also a focus on the director, Zev Berman, in which he describes his motivations for making the film and his approach to filmmaking. Again, this is a worthy DVD extra that adds something worthwhile to the experience of watching Borderland.

While it isn't exactly the greatest horror film ever made, Borderland does do more than its marketing suggests it can. There is a question over the representation of all non-whites as being untrustworthy and/or dangerous (the evil foreigner syndrome that graces other films of this genre) but unless you're looking for any racial ‘issues' it should pass by without concern.

There are films with more gore out there if that's your bag, but not many that at least attempt to engage you with the characters before brutally dispatching them. Borderland is definitely worth a watch; just don't expect to remember it six months down the line.