In 'TerrorVision', one of those basic classics, more of a video club than a neighborhood movie theater, from the late 80s, the pirated broadcasts of alien origin that a snobby terrestrial society compulsively consumed served as a medium for a rubbery and grimy invasion, in all rules, also that of a cinema that did not have them (the rules), and that did not care about them.
’TerrorVision' was like the reverse of another science fiction of the time, that of 'Explorers', by Joe Dante, where television, video games and terrestrial culture made aliens stupid.
If you think about it for a moment (and it seems that no one thought about anything during the script and directing process), 'Borderlands' is what those of us in the late ’80s received, without quality filters, from sci-fi VHS, and what reached the most conventional genre in times of recycling where the wisdom sought (that of the camera of the alien race in Eli Roth’s new feature film) is nothing more than fragments.
Borderlands is not a "good" film, whatever that means (or whatever it matters whether it is or not), but it is a clear example of how intelligently non-intelligent life existed and exists in a science fiction without "respectable" references, of pure formulaic consumption, and where the errors are more interesting than the occasional successes.
A product at the service of a cult video game, Borderlands does not even bother to provide it with scaffolding and cinematic dramatis personae: its screens follow one another faithfully and mechanically, and yet, you notice that deep down Eli Roth and his sidekick in the script do not give a damn about anything, and that these two are the true (and successful) villains of the film, not that Atlas corporation with an Edgar Ramirez decidedly elsewhere; Neither the morons, the super morons, nor that armored nemesis of Krieg, important in the game bytes, dispatched here in the blink of an eye. I haven’t remembered such a wonderful act of fifth columnism since Steven E. De Souza blew up 'Street Fighter'.
Like the 'TerrorVision' broadcasts, 'Borderlands' is a total nonsense (in a truly Martian version of 'Total Recall'), a collection of wrong decisions, with no dramatic progression and with the intention of not pleasing the current public, badly accustomed to being horrified by the botched and not fascinated by it.
Eli Roth piles up characters of demolition (when not directly hateful), with a confessed look from the comics of Jamie Hewlett, in sets full of garbage, scrap, urine and fecal matter. It seeks to be a substantial sci-fi trash, from 'Star Crash' to 'The Adventures of Flesh Gordon' (the creatures in stop motion);
a tribute to directors that not even the Troma-bred James Gunn has had the decency to mention (yet) in his Marvel and DC adventures: Ted Nicolau, David DeCoteau, Fred Olen Ray, Albert Pyun (there is a lot of his 'Cyborg' in 'Borderlands') and many others forgotten by a present that buys physically perfect tomatoes, but without any flavour.
The best moments of 'Borderlands' are not when it wants to be funny and isn’t funny at all (for example, the logorrheic robot with the voice of Jack Black turned into a minion), but when it doesn’t try to be and is, for example in its lousy action sequences.
Or when Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis hit the nail on the head with what they’re doing, and where they’re doing it: having a nerve and having fun. Perhaps the feeling of a joke at the expense of video games, science fiction and Eli Roth’s own inexperience in the genre isn’t conveyed too much (he’s more comfortable in horror and violence, as if he were dreaming of what Joe D’Amato would have done with 'Star Wars'), however, his assumed insignificance and desire to make few friends can only be endearing.
It’s a shame that 'Borderlands' wasn’t discovered in the display cases of a video store back in 1986, with our unruly VHS innocence intact.
Rent it, watch it on a Friday night with friends, junk food and drinks. Comment on it, laugh at it, criticize it and decide to watch it again, no matter what those film critics write about it, even those at Fotogramas, who love this nonsense. Hopefully in 2024 they will continue like this.