Call it “Final Prayer,” as they do in the USA, or call it “The Borderlands,” as they do everywhere else. Just don’t forget to call it the best found footage horror ever!
The concept of found footage horror has, alas, usually been better than the execution. In theory, the found footage format — one in which a movie is created to seem like real-life that just happened to be taped by an observer — is ideally suited to the horror genre. What could be scarier than a story that, aesthetically as well as ostensibly, is set in our world?
The problem is that found footage horror usually squanders its creepy potential in order to make it a cheap, short-cut gimmick. For every masterpiece like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Wer,” there is utter garbage like the “Paranormal Activity” series, “Apollo 18,” and “The Devil Inside.” Even worse, the found footage horror that does have strong qualitative merits is usually still little more than visceral. “The Blair Witch Project” is clever and “Wer” is compelling, but neither would be particularly memorable as narratives or character studies if not for their particular format. Those movies are better than the norm strictly because they actually take advantage of the unique qualities of their sub-genre; if they were transplanted to another form, they would almost certainly fall flat.
“The Borderlands,” by contrast, is an intrinsically fantastic yarn. (I’m going by the title I prefer.) It tells the story of two intelligent, charismatic men — one a young and cheerful tech geek, the other a sullen and alcoholic Vatican veteran — who are sent to the English countryside to determine if a supposed miracle at an ancient church could be the genuine article. For the first two acts, they and a series of intriguing secondary characters either explore the creepy world they’ve been asked to investigate or have intelligent conversations about their mission. Even the seemingly trivial exchanges are either pregnant with deeper meaning or simply enjoyable as well-written, witty dialogue. This may be the only found footage horror film I’ve ever seen which could work just as well as a radio play as it could as a movie. By the time the third act commences, both the story and the protagonists have been well-established.
That third act is quite a doozy. I dare not explain why without spoiling it, but suffice to say that it makes everything which came earlier more than worth the ride. After the credits start to roll and we hear a soothing song that seems almost like a taunt, we look back at the movie which came before and everything starts to make sense.
All of the ominous foreshadowing.
All of the nods to deeper character motivations and philosophies.
All of the lore connected to the story’s underlying premise.
I was not joking when I wrote earlier that this is the greatest found footage horror of all time. Not even the milestone “Cannibal Holocaust” or the entertaining “Quarantine” compare to this one. If I had to recommend a single found footage horror movie to newcomers, it would be “The Borderlands.”