Borderland
(2007) 114 Min.
Rated: R (gore, nudity, mutilation)
Country: USA | Mexico
Director: Zev Berman
Starring: Damian Alcazar, Jake Muxworthy, Brian Presley, Rider Strong, Martha Higareda, Sean Astin
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Three college students visit a Mexican border town and get mixed up with a murdering cult.
Synopsis:
Two Mexico City police officers, Ulises (Alcazar) and his partner investigate a house that is filled with sacrificial human remains of a ritual. The two cops get ambushed by two of the cultists.
Ulises is tied and forced to watch as the cultists cut off his partner’s hands, pull out his eyes, and finally decapitate him. Ulises is shot in the leg and allowed to live as a warning to other police.
A year later in Galveston, Texas, a few college students are hanging out at a campfire. Henry (Muxworthy), Ed (Presley) and Phil (Strong) decide to head down to Mexico for a week and visit strip clubs.
While in a strip club, Ed gets stabbed defending a bartender named Valeria (Higareda). Ed falls for her. Henry sets up Phil with a prostitute named Amelia for his first sexual encounter. As Phil is at Amelia’s house he feels guilty after seeing a portrait of Jesus Christ and he hears the Amelia’s infant daughter crying.
Later Henry is annoyed that Phil didn’t have sex with the prostitute. The trio meet up with Valeria and her cousin Lupe. They take mushrooms and go to a carnival while high. Phil decides to give a stuffed toy to Amelia’s baby and goes off on his own.
While Phil is on the streets and high, he gets into a stranger’s car and get abducted.
The next morning Ed and Henry realize Phil is missing. They try to ask local police for assistance, but they won’t search for him until enough time has passed.
Phil, meanwhile, is kept chained up in a shack. A man named Randall (Astin) introduces himself and gives Phil water telling him that he will meet “Papa” soon. He explains to Phil that they practice Palo Myombe.
Valeria tries to help Ed and Henry. Lupe tells them that the people who kidnapped Phil are dangerous and everyone in town fears them, even the police. Henry tries to confront one of the cars following them around town and gets shot at. One shot grazing his neck, almost hitting a major artery.
The cult leader Santillan visits the ranch where Phil is kept and explains to him that he will be used next instead of Mexicans.
Ulises wanders into the hospital where Ed and Henry are and tells them he knows where their friend is kept. He explains that Santillan uses human blood to shield his drugs from being seen by police and to thank the spirits for protection he offers up human sacrifice.
Valeria goes home to find Lupe beheaded in bed. Valeria and Ed go back to the hotel only to find that Henry has been murdered by a group of cultists who hacked him to death with machetes.
Ulises, Valeria and Ed decide to visit the cult ranch to save Phil since he will be sacrificed that night. However, they are too late as Phil gets cut and attacked by the cult leader, killing him.
Ulises manages to sneak into the large house where Santillan is taking a bath after murdering Phil. Ulises gets stabbed and shot, but manages to shoot Santillan dead. Ed sees Phil’s head in a bag and takes Ulises to escape from the cult ranch.
The group escapes to a house near the border, however the cult catches up with them. Ulises dies from his wounds, Ed and Valeria manage to fight off and kill most of the cult members who followed them to the house including Randall.
In an afterword, text explains that several kilos of cocaine were found at the cult ranch as well as human hair, Ed and Valeria were questioned by US police after swimming across the border, over fifty bodies were found at the cult ranch and that the case remains open to this day as several suspects are still at large.
Review:
Based very loosely on the murder of Mark Kilroy and the cult that murdered him in 1989. I would venture to say that it’s only loosely influenced on the real events as the body count is highly inflated in the film.
The film is shot in over-saturated color with a yellow filter, with shaky camera and quick cuts that can seem jarring. It’s a style that was popularized by 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle) and Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder). Here it detracts from the film as some scenes are so dark and shaky that it’s difficult to see.
The acting is pretty solid with Sean Astin acting as a horrible American serial killer just assisting this murderous cult.
The film started out very tense with it’s opening scene of torture and seemed as thought it would become torture-porn. However, after the film started in earnest it’s focus on the college students was a bit mired in melodrama. After a few deaths, the film then shifts gears into an action shoot-em-up in the last few minutes in the border house. So the direction of the film seems to be pulled in several different directions and it doesn’t seem to master any of those genres convincingly. It seems a bit gory for an action film. It’s definitely too short on character development for a dark drama.
At the end of the day it’s kind of forgettable. The true story of the cult and the murder of Mark Kilroy is far more fascinating and sad. This film, instead, tries to take the ideas of the true event and hype them into a cautionary tale about Mexico and the murderous cults that lie therein.