Review: Borderland [2007]
Dir. Zev BermanCast: Brian Presley, Rider Strong, Jake Muxworthy, Beto Cuevas, Martha Higareda
I have a dilemma with the genre of so-called "torture porn" that has muscled its devious way into the horror movie limelight in recent years, my primary concern is that countless movies are bypassed or just rejected due to this catch-all tag. Such movies as Hostel
and Touristas
are essentially nauseous, inelegant, and of virtually no redeeming cinematic value, whereas films like Martyrs
, Saw
, and now, Borderland
, albeit sharing similarities to the former in tone, brutality and grittiness, have much more depth of story and cogency of execution to just be demeaned by a hip epithet.
, it seemed like the series was destined to be bastardised once again. Then, as if to add insult to injury from the perspective of the already disenfranchised fanbase, they inexorably announced that this fresh chapter would be directed by McG, who's solitary big budget experience, 
, was not strictly the genre credentials everyone had envisioned for helming a righteous 
-worthy sequel. Add to this no Governator and some unknown actor constituting the lion's share of the screentime, could this truly be the film to extricate what seemed like a stagnant franchise?
is interminably and unjustly likened by reviewers to 
, understandable given its plot, cast of characters and the cinematic mechanisms utilised, but that is undeniably where any similarity ends. Although 
is director Michael Bassett’s follow-up to his creepy little World War I horror opus 
and follows a multifarious band of juvenile delinquents and their custodians as they fight for their lives on a remote island against a lone, revenge-driven ex-special forces soldier. 
and you are some way to assimilating the cinematic niche where this black-hearted little film dwells.
, engendering drive-in screens across a whole nation to drip scarlet and interminably altering the face of horror cinema forever. Every gross-out, effects laden murder to grace the screen in the proceeding four decades have this low budget beacon to thank for it. Now take a minute and reflect on this, dear friends, this was NOT a case of a film that just happened to be shocking at the time, even by today's digitally embellished horror standards, this unpretentious little film, squeaking in at a mere 67 minutes, has more bloodshed per frame than all the slasher films that followed in it's wake. So the question remains, why a 39 year gap between this genre-shifting archetype and it's sequel? Well let's take a look at the evidence and see what turns up...
plows the, as yet, unfurrowed turf of effluvium related horror... baffled? Well read on dear friends. 
is the single most sure-footed entry in the Nightmare series since the original 
, made prior to that other self-reverential, post-ironic box office favourite 
, it once again asserts just how authoritative Wes Craven can be at envisioning hauntingly potent, conceptual horror movies. The film within a film paradigm has been applied many times before and since but here under Craven's dexterous touch fabricates a very interesting sojourn indeed.
the Japanese horror novel by Koji Suzuki and the eponymous 1998 film by Hideo Nakata, this South Korean take is more or less a facsimile of 2002's US remake 
in as much as it is a remake that does little artistically to rationalize its existance at all. 
tersely rehashes the prototype with a new cast, a new language, some praiseworthy moments and the integration of some of the novel’s plot points that were absent from the anteceding film. This adds up to an passable movie that may prove interesting for aficionados of the franchise (or for anybody curious in glimpsing how the same story can be filtered through the lens of contrasting filmmakers), but overall it is little more than a banal accomplishment.
is a film that every self-respecting horror fan should yearn desperately to love, with its miniscule budget, genre referencing, Norwegian roots and it's poetic, snow-blasted mountain locations. Oh, and did I forget to mention... Nazi Zombies. That's right, it's been a long time since we had Nazi Zombies on screen with the turgid Zombie Lake, and sadly 
, this is the film that spawned a score of 'trendy psychological thrillers', most unsuccessful but a few going on to comprehensive box office domination like 
. So please, allow me my indulgence, and read on...
. This hypnotic, pitch-black drama gave audiences a protagonist in a jet black suit who conducted all manner of felonious physical barbarity on his adversaries. The fact that 
, what many profess to be the single foremost Bigfoot film of all time, with... this travasty! Disregarding completely 1977’s Return To Boggy Creek, made by another disparate group of low budget psuedo film-makers, which in turn, succeeded in ignoring the first film. This film instead turns out to be a bland assimilation of 
and an erstwhile episode of 
, any concept of mystery and foreboding is dissipated only to be commuted by a sense of utter apathy.
, 
, 
), and now has fancied to take on one of the cornerstones of modern horror history... Jason Vorhees! Bay’s latest production, a quick and dirty remake of 
, is not as excruciating as it could have been, by that rationale it can not be called laudable either. What it does deliver are the staples required to make a Friday 'date-night' horror movie; sex, drugs and buckets o' blood 
