Condemned-Soul

As someone who's played most of the games, I had to watch this, even though reviews pretty much speak for themselves. It's not Uwe Boll level of bad when talking about adaptations of popular video games, but it's still poor filmmaking that does an injustice to the source material and lacks any sense of depth and fun.

'Borderlands' is a science fiction action comedy about an infamous bounty hunter who is tasked with finding the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe on a hostile planet, in the process forming an alliance with a ragtag group of misfits and uncovering Pandora's powerful secrets.

It begins with some obnoxious narration to bypass competent plot setup before blindly ignoring what makes the games so appealing and playable. The film is badly miscast across the board, the dialogue is a mixture of weak and corny, the characters are shallow and unlikeable, there's little attempt at world-building (or showcasing the planet's hostile wildlife), and the weak violence is at complete odds with the brutal setting.

Of all the directors to make the action tame, who'd have thought Eli Roth?! He's no torture porn king, but he knows how to splash around the red stuff. This is a "12"; the games are "18". Enough said. Gratuitous violence is a vital part of the games to match the demented enemies, punchy weaponry, and comically dark tone, but instead we have a hollow representation of Pandora, where bullets land without blood spurts - in fact, there's zero evidence they land at all! At the bare minimum I'd have expected Eli Roth to have made a schlocky, gory exploitation film with a few gruesome pleasures. I can only imagine that version was butchered into tiny PG-13-bite-sized pieces in post-production.

The CGI is also not good enough, clearly a result of the small budget. All of the big set-pieces are sorely lacking in visual clarity in one area or another, occasionally looking like buggy cutscenes that are missing a crispness to the animations, which is particularly noticeable when characters are propelled through the air, or vehicles crash and explode. The environments look generally good from a distance and the production design is adequate, but, ultimately, 'Borderlands' required the same type of series treatment akin to 'Fallout', including a more skilled crew who are actual fans of the games. As it is, this is a messy, short, and hollow adaptation that was destined to fail.

Score - 3/10.

Set amidst video nasty hysteria and Night Stalker murder madness, 'MaXXXine' goes hard(core) with its 80s love letter vibe; a sleazy-giallo-exploitation hybrid where blood and neon make for an aesthetic match made in heaven as a black-gloved Argento maniac prowls; there's also some graphic Lucio Fulci 'New York Ripper'-esque cruelty found right in the film's gut... Its style beats its substance hands down and the final act is needlessly messy, but it's a gloriously lurid throwback affair regardless, with synth pumping through its retro veins.

Overall, Ti West's trilogy comes to a good, if imperfect, conclusion. 7/10.