Way back in 1989, a young college medical student from Texas disappeared, and while his friends waited for hours back on the American side, they had no idea their buddy had been snatched by drug goons posing as Mexican police, and was being ferried off to a ranch for a brutal sacrifice, so the local drug lord's marijuana crop would pass ‘invisibly' across the border.

That true-crime incident happened shortly before co-writer/director Zev Berman (Briar Patch, aka Plain Dirty)was traveling with his own college buddies into Mexico for some fun, and the horrible case that took place outside the border town of Matamoros, Mexico, lingered long enough and compelled him to craft a story about three college guys who lose their own friend, discover he's slated for a blood sacrifice, and find themselves helpless when no one in town, including the police, will save their buddy.

Berman's film is refreshing for its unpretentiousness: the editing isn't oversexed, the gore by KNB is practical and absolutely disgusting, and the torment is intense and repulsive; you could say whatever Tobe Hooper chose to cut away from in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Berman cuts to, cross-cutting plenty of reaction shots of the tormented victims with cold headshots of the sadistic killers.

Borderland isn't torture porn, but Berman's zest for intensity means a certain faction of horror fans sickened and sick of torture sequences will find the opening scene and the sacrifice at the end sufficiently extreme to pass on the film, which is a shame, because Berman's decision to show a fair measure of torture means he's discoloured what's already a pretty horrific thriller.

A major surprise is Berman's decision to ratchet back the usual clichés of college goofballs looking for sex, drugs, and sleaze so the characters aren't wholly dumb youths served up as charnel fodder; no one's particularly deep, but they're memorable enough that one cares for who lives, dies, and suffers, and that's another important attribute in one of the best films to emerge from Lionsgate's 8 Films to Die For series. Prior installments have been misfires, dull, badly written, or over-hyped as gripping rollercoaster rides when their respective directors have been overly arty and massively unfocused (The Abandoned) or hacks cranking out direct to video fodder, which none of the films should be.

Berman's film is elegantly lensed by Scott Kevan (Cabin Fever), his old film school partner, and the ‘scope photography is beautifully tuned to each scene's dramatic intensity: oversaturated, burnt out colours for hot, grubby days; a chilling mix of tungsten and fluorescent lighting in the guys' sweaty-coated hotel; or the bleached out and grainy textures for the shootout and hack-out finale that appropriately pays homage to the original Hills Have Eyes (1977).

Also of note are the practical in-camera effects for the nighttime circus sequence, and some really elegant nighttime shots, including a cemetery sequence that has a whole town dimly lit in sickly lime green in the distance. A lot of care went into mood and décor, and the actors are equally strong in their standard archetypal roles.

The music score by Andrés Levin (best-known for the dance musicals El Cantante and Feel the Noise ) is also quite noteworthy for not drawing attention to itself, and supporting the nastiness without making it sexy; most scores tend to be a mush of atmospheric sound design or cool grooves, and its refreshing to hear cues that hit the terror mark using a seamless blend of electronic and organic instruments.

Berman and co-writer Eric Poppen are also smart to avoid wasting our time on dumb red herrings and potential double-crosses, which keeps the conflicts simple and lean: the two guys, a pair of local girls, and a burnt out cop who witnessed his partner's live dismemberment (shown in the film's opening sequence) are the only forces trying to plot a rescue of the abducted youth in a town steeped in suspicion, superstition, and ignorance.

One caveat: Borderland isn't flattering in painting Mexican border locales as filthy, sleaze-rotted crime holes with superstitious primitives, but the clichés are somewhat counterbalanced by a featurette narrated by George Gavito, the former Deputy Sheriff of Brownsville, Texas, who headed the American half of the investigation that uncovered and solved the Matamoros cult killings.

The real youth's name's been strangely obfuscated (his picture is gone, and there's a few instances where Gavito actually looped his reply because he accidentally said the victim's real name), but there's crime scene video footage of a loyal acolyte who pointed out where 23 bodies were buried on the ranch, and some graphic footage of two exhumations (which themselves appeared in contemporary magazine articles).

In addition to the featurette on the Matamoros case, Berman hosts the making of featurette, “Inside Zev's Head: A Filmmaker's Diary,” with concise overviews of the script's genesis, night filming in Mexico, casting Sean Astin (the Lord of the Rings trilogy) as a nasty thug, and eschewing any CGI effects in favour of visceral practical prosthetics and bloodletting (the juicy traditional way). Berman also joins lead actor Brian Presley and two production members on the commentary track, and expands on the featurette material without too much repetition.

The most trivial extra are the webisodes for the “Miss Horrorfest” contest tied to the 8 Films to Die For film festival, which has busty contestants (oddly most are dominatrixes) meeting in a haunted house, and their promotional tour stops at various locations, and the final contest that crowns a winner.

Berman's film is a good bridge between edgier present day gore and the implied horror from early seventies shockers, and while the torture and torment scenes are restricted to three, they still make the film an uneasy experience – which is what Berman had intended.

This title is part of an 8-film After Dark Horrorfest series from Lions Gate/Maple, which includes Bordlerland (2007), Crazy Eights, The Deaths of Ian Stone, Lake Dead, Mulberry St., Nightmare Man, Tooth and Nail, and Unearthed.

© 2008 Mark R. Hasan