I am only writing about Eli Roth’s Borderlands to save you $15

Brock Wilbur,
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Borderlands, I guess. // Courtesy Lionsgate Films

I was going to take the easy out. Just publish the words “Shit Sandwich” in this space, embed a trailer, and call it a day. It would’ve matched the film’s level of effort to give it two words in return. It would have also been appropriate to just re-use a pop-culture reference and hope the dopamine hit of “Oh, I know that one!” would be enough to spark a tiny fragment of joy.

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Unfortunately, I worry that handing this over to Spinal Tap wouldn’t do the work that needs to be done here tonight.

“Shit Sandwich” would be enough to make you laugh at how bad a movie sounded, or more likely, think that my standards of films are too high and that I can’t just enjoy dumb summer blockbusters for being dumb summer blockbusters. I can’t risk that possible reaction. You’d shrug it off, and you might wind-up buying a ticket to see Eli Roth’s Borderlands in a movie theater this weekend. On a lark. As a goof.

The only reason I’m writing this review is to physically prevent you from spending $15.

I don’t know you, but I still care about you too much to let you spend $15 on Eli Roth’s Borderlands. In this economy? No. There are such better uses of your time and your money. You could buy three $5 lottery scratchers, win nothing on them, and toss them in the garbage. This would be a net win—even though you’d leave just as unfilled as seeing Eli Roth’s Borderlands, you wouldn’t have wasted nearly two hours in the process. Time you can’t get back. We’re all going to die someday. If you go see Eli Roth’s Borderlands in a theater, you’re wasting existence itself.

You don’t need to do Eli Roth’s Borderlands to yourself. I shouldn’t have done Eli Roth’s Borderlands to myself, but I am only comforted by knowing I’ll save at least one of you. And let me be clear: I do not hate Eli Roth’s Borderlands. No one could hate Eli Roth’s Borderlands more than it hates itself.

Eli Roth’s Borderlands is the film adaptation of one of the more recognizable AAA game series in the world. While most of the games are looter shooters—light on plot, big on using wacky weapons to blow up waves of enemies for hours on end—a few spin-offs have been heavily story focused; building a fascinating world and populating it with complex, hilarious characters. Leaving aside everything about whether or not this movie does a good job of bringing the source material to the big screen (it DOES NOT) Eli Roth’s Borderlands completely fumbles… the point of Borderlands.

A precocious teenage girl (who may have superpowers) is kidnapped from an evil corporation. A rag-tag group of rebels try to protect their kidnapped magic child while also seeking a fabled secret fault on a backwaters, dangerous planet. Picture Guardians of the Galaxy if you didn’t give a shit about anyone.

Speaking of not giving a shit, Eli Roth’s Borderlands exists to serve up heaping helpings of exactly two things: ultraviolence and out-of-pocket humor. That these would be two ‘epic fails’ at the center of the film is perplexing.

This is nothing for no one.

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Borderlands, I guess. // Courtesy Lionsgate Films

Regarding the jokes and silly situations, Eli Roth’s Borderlands opt to find humor in constantly pointing at how much it doesn’t make or sense or is built on a set of tropes we’ve seen elsewhere, done better. Jack Black voices the side-kick robot Claptrap, who introduces himself by saying he’s been programmed for “witty banter.” Witty banter doesn’t come out of Claptrap. Kevin Hart is ostensibly the co-lead character, and bafflingly, he doesn’t have a single joke in the nearly two-hour runtime. Cate Blanchett, the only one who seems to be trying here, mostly says, “Let’s move this along,” “I don’t care about this,” and “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Somehow frozen in the amber of comedy three decades old, every other line runs along the lines of “Slow your roll and tell us what’s the dealio?” The only moments that even gesture at aiming for “jokes” are repeated insertions of poop and piss. I’m not joking. “What’s the dealio with all the piss?” is the summary of every moment projected to the silver screen.

This is nothing for no one.

Back on the subject of ultraviolence, the PG-13 rating, and the need to have the broadest appeal achievable, I perplexingly have to include the following criticism: In Eli Roth’s Borderlands, Eli Roth (the director of Hostel) forgot to include any violence. This is a completely bloodless affair. Thousands of psycho gang members and evil space military folks are shot with machine guns or bashed with melee weapons. You will not see a drop of blood on the screen. I worried that I was having a psychotic break with reality. Why would you hire Eli Roth to make a feature of slap fights? Imagine if John Wick opted to, instead of a beautiful ballet of bloody headshots, have Keanu pointing his finger at men, only to have them immediately fall down and take a nap. Despite a million rounds of ammunition unleashed atop a mountain of grenades and flamethrowers, the actual damage done has the bloodshed of a Bluey episode.

This is nothing for no one. Eli Roth has made something gross, but not gross for the reasons one hires Eli Roth.

Eli Roth’s Borderlands is the filmic equivalent of doing chores. There’s a checklist that needed to be checked off, and that dictates each scene. There are locations we visit because there were locations in the game. There are people who appear because they were in a game. This is a joyless slog that the cast and filmmaker seem uninterested in even sharing with the world.

Not every movie has to say something, but for a $15 ticket a movie should be expected to at least talk.

Walking out of my AMC, the question I’m left with is not whether Eli Roth’s Borderlands could have been good, but rather, did Eli Roth’s Borderlands need to be? Does Eli Roth’s Borderlands want to exist at all? It’s the most glaring example of “We spent too much money here to not inflict it on folks to recoup something.” Or it would be, except we now live in a world where films get shelved all the time, to give studios a tax break. There has never been a better candidate for deletion to recoup financial investment than Eli Roth’s Borderlands. It is not merely joyless and pointless, it is screaming to be put out of its misery. This is the artistic equivalent of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream—where I living thing begs for death, yet an unjust god refuses to ever let it die. It yearns for sweet release, but is made instead to keep being; a grotesque film-like substance that blights the very space it occupies.

This is nothing for no one. Everyone involved should feel shame, but luckily the world will almost certainly have forgotten Eli Roth’s Borderlands ever existed by the time September rolls around.

Eli Roth’s Borderlands is historically bad; it actively resents you for watching it. Worst of all, it’s just fucking boring.

What an embarrassment. Let’s never speak of it again.

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