'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).

Three libidinous college dudes from Texas head to Mexico to party, only to find that their bravado and swagger get the attention of a vicious satanic cult that also deals in drugs. It's a dark, dreary story premise transferred to screen through irritatingly revved-up action and lots of gore. Though the script borrowed its idea from the real-life Matamoros Cult Killings of 1989, the film offers very little narrative realism.Our three youthful gringos are all jerks. None of them are worth caring about. They make one stupid mistake after another; but that keeps the plot moving. Character stereotypes abound. The script's first ten pages or so could have been condensed into about three. Plot structure is chaotic. And we never get a sense of where in Mexico we are. A few references to "Mexico City" confuse, it being nowhere near the American border. The "border" seems to refer to anywhere along the two thousand mile stretch of land between Tijuana and Matamoros. But who cares about facts when there's so much visual torture to gawk at ...Cinematography trends dark. That jerky camera gets annoying rather quickly. Background music is highly manipulative. Acting skill is largely irrelevant. What counts here is the ability of a performer, helped along by the makeup and costumes department, to look suitably grungy and/or bloody. As such, these "actors" do a fine job.Though the film advertises itself as based on a real event, that real event involved only one college guy, not three. And the lack of geographic specificity renders the entire production overly generalized. I was expecting a film that stayed closer to the facts of the 1989 incident, not a horror story that looks and feels more fictional than real.

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...

Borderland starts as three college buddies, Ed (Brian Presley), Phil (Rider Strong) & Henry (Jake Muxworthy) decide to head off to Mexico for a wild weekend of drink & women before going their separate ways as they leave school. The friends drive to a small Mexican border town where Ed meets a barmaid named Valeria (Martha Higareda) & Phil goes off with a prostitute. later that night they all meet again & Phil decides to go back to the hotel by himself but gets kidnapped on the street & driven off in a car. Waking up Phil finds himself tied up in a barn on a farm belonging to Mexican drug dealer Santillan (Beto Cuevas) & his cannibalistic cult of killers who worship him as some sort of God. Worried that Phil has gone missing Ed & Henry contact the Mexican police but they seem unwilling to help, together with Valeria & a old cop with a grudge against the cult they must go it alone in an attempt to save their friend...This Mexican & American co-production was written & directed by Zev Berman & according to the opening titles is 'Based on True Events' although I'd take that with a pinch of salt if I were you, available in an 'Unrated' version that is the one I will be basing my comments on. Just how much of Borderland is actually based on true events is anyone's guess, I personally have never heard of anything like this before & maybe the makers just say a tiny little piece in a newspaper with sketchy details & went from there making most of it up, who know's? Who cares? At almost an hour & fifty minutes long Borderland is easily thirty odd minutes too long, with a low body count & not much of a story Borderland drags badly & I can't really say I remember that much about it even though I only saw it a few hours ago. The character's are all unlikable, despite a few attempts at human drama the script is poor & the attempts to flesh the character's out go nowhere like the speech where Ed says he's not going to college when they get back, the cops warnings in the police station, the rambling speeches that the main bad guy has, the Mexican barmaid who serves no great purpose & just about everyone else barely make an impact. Despite being 'Unrated' the body count is low, just three good guy's & a few baddies right at the end & none of the kills are particularly memorable. Some of the dialogue is difficult to understand as various people speak in thick Mexican accents, I can't say the story grabbed me & as a whole it was fairly predictable as well with the now standard hero kills bad guy's & ends up with pretty girl routine at the climax.I must admit Borderland annoyed me, as well as being boring & not that gory the whole twitchy camera got on my nerves. While not as bad as some films where you can't see what's going on because of the excessive jerking of the camera Borderland features a camera that never stays still, it's always twitching & moving which just gets irritating. The film looks bland with bleached out colours, Borderland is just a unremarkable & colourless film. I was expecting a bit more gore here, there's a brief shot of a hand being sawn off, two plucked out eyeballs are seen (the eye's being taken out is not shown), there's a bit of blood splatter, a guy is stabbed with a machete in the shoulder, there are a few bullet wounds & a decapitated head but not much else.Actually filmed in Mexico on what was probably a low budget, the production values are alright but that twitchy moving camera got on my nerves as did the very washed out colour scheme used. The acting was alright, nothing to write home about or anything though.Borderland is another cheap horror film that thinks it's gorier & cleverer than it is, with little in the way of developed story or character's & an almost complete lack of gore along with the pedestrian pace means Borderland never gets going.