After Dark Films, founded by Courtney Solomon (Dungeons & Dragons and An American Haunting), is making a splash in the low-budget horror scene. In 2006 the After Dark Horror Fest arrived, spotlighting eight films that would have otherwise been relegated to the straight-to-video market where they would most likely be ignored. This festival of sorts offered an opportunity for horror fans to get a look at these films on the big screen, as well as give the filmmakers some more exposure.
This year, the second for the festival, I was able to take in five of the features. Are all of them great? No, but they all have something to offer, something outside of the mainstream glut of remakes and imports. One of these films is Borderland.
The setting is Texas. A party is raging on a beach and in the midst of it all, a pair of friends, Henry and Phil, are wondering where a third, Ed, is. The next morning, they find Ed sitting on the sands on the far side of the beach. The trio are facing their last days together, their last hurrah before heading off to their respective graduate schools. So, what are three buddies in Texas to do? Head for the border for some booze, drugs, and sex. And go they do, driving across the line into Mexico for some unadulterated, unregulated fun. Never in a million years could they have suspected what lay ahead of them, what fate would hold, and what horrors they would encounter.
One day while tripping on mushrooms with some girls at a carnival Phil wins a giant teddy bear that he wishes to give to the teenage prostitute who had been chosen earlier to relieve young Phil of his virginity. It was an act that did not take place since he finds out she is a mother and develops some fast feelings for the young woman. This proves to be the trigger effect that sets in motion the events leading them into the mouth of a real world hell.
That hell is a gang of drug traffickers who practice palo mayombe, black magic used to communicate with the dead and grant them powers. This group just happens to be on the lookout for an American, for their fear at the prospect of death is a powerful ingredient and proves to be more intense than the locals. Phil, walking along the streets, alone, at night, and high, is just too enticing an opportunity to pass up. He is taken and held captive until the time is right.
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