Jack Black shits out bullet casings.

Before 2024 I never would have thought that we’d need a Borderlands movie, and now that it’s 2024 and we have a Borderlands film I’m not convinced at all that we needed it. To say that Borderlands shit the bed is something of an understatement that makes professional Olympic level bed shitters look like amateurs in comparison. With a $120 million budget, the film has raked in a whole $30 million at the box office and ran so well that it is already out on VOD three weeks later.

Directed by the well known Eli Roth and written by some lesser known guy named Eli Roth, Borderlands is a really shitty movie if what you’re looking for is a good Borderlands movie. Taken as a movie on its own, Borderlands exists somewhere between really high budget porno and a high budget Syfy movie.

The movie stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, because what everyone wanted in the Borderlands film was for one of their favorite 20-something year old character to be played by a 55 year old who complains she’s too old for this shit. She’s joined by Roland (Kevin Hart), Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Claptrap (Jack Black), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), as the crew tries to track down Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who is apparently the special one and key to opening up the vault. The vault? It has secrets and stuff inside it, the people who played the game know what I’m talking about.

Maybe the only decent casting in this film to the game is Benjamin Byron Davis as Marcus, but he can’t hold on to his accent for too long. Gina Gershon plays Mad Moxxi, Edgar Ramirez as Atlas, Cheyenne Jackson as Jakobs, Janina Gavankar as Commander Knoxx, and there’s an appearance by Steven Boyer as Scooter.

The problem with Borderlands is that it appeals to seemingly nobody. Borderlands fans will find it hard to enjoy because it’s like a facsimile of a Borderlands story. Tiny Tina’s story is completely changed to shoehorn it into a generic story about being the chosen one with a twist that is so heavily telegraphed that it might as well not exist in the first place. Borderlands is chock full of characters with backstories and strong personalities and Eli Roth just kinda threw that out the window to make for a generic story straight from a Mad Libs book.

And it doesn’t do much for non-Borderlands fans who happen to stumble upon it for the same reasons. The story is painfully generic, if you’re not a fan of the Borderlands series the secondary characters that mostly seem to exist for “hey I recognize that” value will go completely over your head, and it’s ultimately an action film with low stakes and low reward. Very few times over the course of the film are any of the characters ever in real danger, they don’t seem to get hurt at all, and in the climax they are covered in plot shield that lets them deflect bullets without a worry as they are shot at repeatedly.

All of the effects in this movie look terrible, like the computers died when they were about 70% complete in rendering and they didn’t have the budget for new hardware. Once again it feels like a high budget Syfy movie, and if this was a Syfy original film or say a Blumhouse production that cost $5-20 million to make than it would be more understandable. Actually a Blumhouse production would look much better for $20 million, I wonder how much of the budget went to salaries of the actors.

Should you watch Borderlands? I certainly wouldn’t pay money for it, and I didn’t. Wait until it’s on a service you already pay for if you’re not willing to sail the seven seas, but for God’s sake don’t spend more than $5 on a rental.

Rating: C-