The Borderlands (2015)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

While Final Prayer can be slow at times, the overall atmosphere is very unsettling, the acting actually decent, and the ending, well, just give the film a chance. Fans of Lovecraft will enjoy this one.

So , looking for a movie to watch and found this one.. impressed by the high IMDb rating , I started reading the reviews; which were glowing !! So I spent the $5 and rented it - bad mistake. The acting is great. It's found footage and that's always annoying , the story takes about a half hour for anything to happen.. just rather boring and irritating character development. One of the 3 main characters is just awful. Text book annoying guy. This just wasn't a good movie. 75% of it is mild and totally uninteresting "scares" , they even throw in a very typical jump scare , which to me is so lame. The last 15 minutes are the "climax" and it's just more shaky cameras and - this is like something my brother would have made with his friends in high school. Very low tech. Screaming , camera cutting out and blood squirting out of mouths. I am easily scared and not hard to please. But this movie, for me was awful. Just not good at all. So I wanted to save everyone else from this ... if you like found footage , there is better out there. In fact a great film that is independent and free on Netflix and similar topic wise is "The Shrine". Another good one is "The Bay" another one is "Exists" all of these found footage and all better than this.

If we start with the idea that many very old churches in Europe were built on top of old pagan places of worship (as if to cap-off the "evil")and then consider the premise that somehow the "evil" refuses to be capped-off and is making itself felt, we are at the starting-point of this movie. The Borderlands of the original title is intended to convey this juxtaposition of the old and the new and the idea that there is "cross-over".The movie centres on the idea that "strange and spooky things" are happening in a village Church and the Vatican sends in a dysfunctional group of "hi-tech" investigators to look into the matter. They are met with increasing hostility in the local village - it may be that we are to assume that the villagers are in favour of the old "pagan" religion, and don't appreciate this meddling about. The team's quarrelsome and drunken efforts to gather evidence are irritatingly haphazard, punctuated with spooky noises and things moving etc. Most of this is portrayed using "found footage" techniques - which you either like or you don't. The team's dysfunctional nature leads them into more quarrelling and blundering about and inevitably getting themselves into dangerous territory without much seeming to realise what they are doing (another fine mess!).The movie has its moments but basically I did not really enjoy it and felt that it relied too much on clichéd "scarey" moments and (nowadays) hackneyed techniques like "found footage" (enough of the Blair Witch Trial, already!). The acting was mostly good with some characters being rather unbelievable - e.g. the Parish Priest. If I were wanting spooky happenings investigated, I certainly would not have deployed this team.

The Borderlands is one of the better found-footage films that has come out of late, and is one of the best British horror films to come out in a seriously long time.Initially a little unconvincing, and with a slightly irritating character played by Robin Hill, it may take a short while to settle into. But as events unfold and things get darker, I guarantee you will be glued to the screen, as creepy and sinister becomes terrifying and horrific. The acting is great, the tension never falters, and the ending is one of the nastiest to feature in a horror film in years. A good film.