Borderline (2025) Review: It’s weird, wild, and not always in a good way

By Seth Metoyer, More Horror Movies - Watching Borderline, I often felt like I’d stumbled into a midnight bargain bin horror spoof, an off-kilter late-’90s fever dream.  Paul Duerson (Ray Nicholson) is the manic yin to Sophia's (Samara Weaving) brittle yang. He’s a hallucinogenic explosion, equal parts charming creep, jittery cartoon, and unhinged cult leader. I couldn’t decide if he was pitch-perfect or completely over the top, but then, that’s the point, right? Maybe? Not unlike a low-budget Tubi reject that unexpectedly charms its way into your nightmares.

Samara Weaving... a shock that she wasn’t front and center. I adore her, but here, she seemed disoriented. Her reactions just off-kilter enough to feel both intentional and under-directed. My money’s on the filmmaker leaning into the fractured-psyche motif, but the result is a lot of “what am I looking at here?” faces.

Structurally, the film feels padded. It sprints off like a happy lunatic, but halfway through it bogs down with wallops and dark jokes that get buried under plot scaffolding. As a genre piece, it flirts with greatness: absurd violence keyed to campy needle drops, a twisted wedding ceremony, and Nicholson’s innocent-but-psychotic sincerity. But it never quite lands on all cylinders.

Having scored music for a similar low-budget horror comedy myself, I see the promise buried beneath the missteps. Low-budget horror is a sandbox for bold ideas, and this movie tries to go big, but maybe too big.

My overall take is that Borderline is bloated, on the verge of fun...but doesn't quite get there and is occasionally brilliant. But the balance never steadies. Rating: 3/5 Blood Drops