Leofwine_draca THE BORDERLANDS is a British addition to the wave of found footage horror films currently doing the rounds. It's a simply-plotted thing about a bunch of male investigators, some of whom have links to the Vatican, descending on a small rural church to investigate some weird goings-on there. What follows is mildly creepy and certainly effective for its genre, although I never found it intense enough to be frightening.The thing with found footage films is that it's easy to enjoy them thanks to the sense of realism built up. The more realistic the film, the better it is, and THE BORDERLANDS gets the true-to-life angle just right. The performances are variable but Gordon Kennedy bolsters things with his strong and dominating presence in the role of Deacon. The film wisely leaves many things unseen, but features some effective moments such as the church tower set-piece, glimpses of paranormal events, and weird goings on at night. The bit with the sheep is really disturbing, for example. The ending references KILL LIST but still works well enough, and overall this is an effective little chiller.

NeilJThomas --major, MMMAJOR spoiler alert-- . . i seriously do not understand how movies of this sort achieve 5+ rating, i'm not venting right now, i wish i could ask some of the people that rated it as such, 'cause i truly fail to understand this. well done, once again you made me waste time and money on this horrendous, childish nonsense.the characters are flat and meaningless, deacon and michael especially who are just both awful, unlikeable and poorly acted cardboard cutouts of people, why would you care about anything that happens to these two is beyond me. gray likewise gives the impression he just popped into existence: no story, bland meaningless character with a single, recurring 1-sided phone call that links his character to anything happening beyond the perimeter of these "borderlands", and to whom it's given the sad task to inject an attempt at pitiful humour into the story, and what story? what is it that happens in this movie, exactly? a single, exceedingly (no. not enough. Exceedingly. nope. EXCEEEEEDINGLY, better... i so hope never to see this man in movies again. EVER. AGAIN.) poorly acted and equally 2-dimensional character who's thankfully been on screen all of 3 minutes total commits suicide, and a single, actual gem of brilliance gives me hope (yet dashed) for future development when gray goes out for a cigarette break and amazingly fails to see his own headstone. mhhh... sheep on fire? OK... that was a moment... but why? who were those guys? what motivated them? why do they wear hoods? why do they harass the protagonists? why does anything happen here AT ALL? well, viewers, that's why it's a horror/"MYS-TE-RY" movie, get it?no.once again, Once a-freakking-gain, another movie that, having just had a scene with a sliver of genius that makes you hope for something better to come, then devolves into a senseless, pointless underground chase for a character who just refuses to stop or at least reply, and who's always just out of reach (see: "as above, so below", the twin to this reeking pile of dog doo, and a dozen of the other 2p movies i've watched in the last 6 months) with nobody ever questioning why would they do that, or where are we going here, 'cause of course it's a friggin labirynth... leading to what i believe is the scene for which the entire movie was greenlit, the "final minute".i would bet my "final dollar" they made the entire mess of a movie on the back of that last minute, they even changed the title, right? from "borderlands" (which borderlands, what are they on about for the love of Bob) to "final prayer"? the directing writer obviously couldn't find a sane a-leads-to-b-leads-to-something-plausible reason for why "our" characters all of a sudden find themselves inside Satan's rectum (...AH YES... (note 1)), so have them blindly follow someone and just find themselves there, OK so we manouvered ourselves so that there's no-one left to "lampshade" the stupidity of it for the viewers, let's just throw it out there, it'll work, they're horror watchers, so morons after all.well, yes, if you managed to give a 5+ to this movie, yes, sorry, but yes, you are.Neil, London, UK. (note 1) and now that you've read that you're going to rent the movie aren't you? aren't you? i'm warning you, don't, it's not going to be even half as much fun as this post was.

andrewhuk I really liked this movie. The low rating does it a disservice but I can understand it, being a movie that is relatively subtle and builds gradually without relying on old school jumps, cranky action sequences or gore at all. It gave me the creeps, and I'm not one to scare easily. I am a big horror fan and have been watching horror since I was far too young to be doing so but generally find the current state of horror to be fairly insipid and uninspiring, unimaginative and not scary, particularly the multiplex horror of recent times. I actually went into this one with fairly high expectations on the back of a recommendation by celebrated UK film critic Mark Kermode who, despite what else you might think of him, really does know his horror, inside out, and also generally seems to share the opinion that a lot of newer horror cinema is lacking in ideas, so when he does recommend a new horror movie I tend to take note. I'm glad I did. It's hard to put my finger on any one specific thing which made this film experience as effective as it was but I'm sure the fantastic rumbling, building, sinister but cleverly sparse soundtrack had something to do with it. The acting was good and the confusion and panic which slowly creeps in was well played out, the script was great, giving equal space for humour as well as terror which never felt forced but on the contrary balances the tone of the film out nicely. Probably most importantly the characters are brilliantly written which is becoming something of a rarity in modern horror cinema it seems. The relationship between the two main characters was a joy to watch develop and was most definitely a major contributing factor in how effecting I found the ending when it finally rears its ugly head. You care about these two. You've warmed to them, you like them, and to see them in such a desperate state of peril gets you right in the gut. It's been a long time since I felt such a sense of dread and discomfort throughout the last act of a film and a long time since the last few moments of a film have stuck in my mind in such a way and left me reeling like it did once the credits hit (with the exception of Kill List, another fantastic recent British horror film that is comparable to this in many ways, sharing the building sense of dread that creeps over you throughout). This is a decent effort by a talented film-maker which manages to do something different with the 'found footage' format and I very much look forward to seeing what they do next.

Rated DG I found it pretty hard to rate this movie. It starts off as a pretty standard haunting horror type movie, although perhaps a little too slow for my liking. Once you get past the awful acting of Robin Hill (sorry bud) as Gray, the rest of them are not bad at all. But, without wanting to spoil it, I actually quite liked the ending. It definitely wasn't the ending I was expecting. And the endings are usually what suck the most about horror movies. I'd actually be quite interested to see if Elliot Goldner directs any other horror movies in the hope that he improves the starter and main course of his movie but with the continued spot on desert!