Borderline wants to be a chaotic thrill ride—a pulpy, twisted home-invasion thriller where a deranged stalker traps a pop star in his delusion of love. And in flashes, it gets there. But for a movie with such an unhinged premise, it feels strangely restrained, like it’s holding back when it should be cranking the tension up to eleven. The performances are solid, the setup is fun, and Penny (Alba Baptista) nearly steals the whole show, but Borderline never fully embraces the madness it promises.
Written and directed by Jimmy Warden in his feature debut, the film is set in 1990s Los Angeles and follows Sofia (Samara Weaving), a pop star whose home is invaded by Duerson (Ray Nicholson), an obsessive fan convinced they are destined to be together. Duerson isn’t working alone—his equally deranged accomplices, Penny and J.H. (Patrick Cox), broke out of a psychiatric facility with him, and they’re fully committed to making this “wedding” happen. Trapped in her own home, Sofia is left to navigate the psychotic mind games of her captors, Adding to the chaos, Sofia’s bodyguard Bell (Eric Dane)—who was nearly killed by Duerson six months earlier—is drawn back into the fray, along with Rhodes (Jimmie Fails), a pro athlete who just happened to pick the worst possible night for a one-night stand.
It’s a strong setup, but the execution feels weirdly quiet. The film has the ambitions of a Tarantino-style thriller, tossing its characters into a pinball machine on ‘multiball’ mode and letting them bounce off each other, but it never cranks the energy up high enough. Instead of chaos, there’s a lot of standing around—scenes that should be electric feel oddly subdued. And for a movie about saving Sofia, it’s hard to care when she barely has a personality beyond “famous and confused about her fuse box.”
That’s not to say Borderline is without its highlights. Penny is hands down the most watchable character, bringing an unhinged, scene-stealing energy that makes her the most memorable villain in the film. Duerson, meanwhile, is effectively creepy—Ray Nicholson’s cold-eyed smile sells his character’s instability, but the script doesn’t give him enough to counter. He spends too much time waiting for the ball to start rolling rather than actively driving the horror. The big showdown between Penny and Sofia is easily the film’s best sequence, but it just makes you wish there had been more moments like it throughout.
The film also struggles with tone. It seems to want bodyguard Bell to be the emotional anchor of the story, but he’s too calm, too quiet, too collected to match the intensity the film is begging for. The cast feels like they’re all acting in different movies—Penny is in The Strangers, Bell is in The Bodyguard, Sofia is in Notting Hill, and Duerson feels like he’s channeling his father in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That kind of genre mashup could have worked, but because the film keeps the volume too low, it never fully gels.
There’s a great movie buried somewhere in Borderline—one with sharper character work, more chaotic energy, and a bigger willingness to let its cast cut loose. As it stands, it’s an interesting, occasionally fun thriller that never fully commits to its own insanity. It had all the ingredients to be a cult classic, but instead, it plays things just a little too safe.
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