The Year’s Best Horror-Comedy Villains Are Very Loosely Based On A True Story
If you missed Borderline earlier this year, here’s your chance to watch it.
1996 was a year full of unique cultural moments. Dolly the Sheep was successfully cloned. Bill Clinton was reelected. The first version of Microsoft’s browser was released, and Charles and Lady Diana got divorced. Two other high-profile cultural moments dominated the airwaves. First, in promotion of his book Bad As I Wanna Be, Dennis Rodman donned a gorgeous custom French wedding gown and took a horse-drawn carriage through the streets of New York. He said he was marrying himself.
In more serious news, Robert Dewey Hoskins was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1996. He’d been in legal hot water for some time after repeatedly stalking Madonna, telling her she was supposed to be his wife (and threatening her if he couldn’t “have” her). One day, while Madonna was away in Florida, he climbed the walls of her Hollywood home, jumped into her pool, and was shot by her security. Following the sentence, Hoskins was later sent to a Los Angeles mental hospital for an unrelated crime, before escaping and being recaptured a week later. These two unique 1996 historical oddities loosely fuel the horror-comedy Borderline, from Cocaine Bear writer Jimmy Warden.
The film follows Samara Weaving’s world-famous pop star and actress Sofia in ’90s LA. Obsessive, dangerous stalker Paul (Ray Nicholson) is sent to a mental health facility after stabbing Sofia’s bodyguard in front of her gorgeous mansion. Six months later, Sofia is understandably troubled when Paul and his newfound co-conspirator Penny (Alba Baptista) escape confinement with one mission in mind: to marry Sofia, whether she wants to or not. Complicating matters further is the presence of controversial, famed ballplayer Rhodes (Jimmie Fails), Sofia’s new paramour, when Paul and Penny break into Sofia’s mansion to host a coercive wedding.
Samara Weaving is memorable and intense as Sofia, far from a passive protagonist. She continually resists the unhinged pair, creating continual opportunities for conflict. Though she is the protagonist, one could argue that the stars of the show are the pair of escaped convicts. Nicholson and Baptista play Paul and Penny with a wicked sense of humor and pure detachment from reality. Penny, a friend Paul made in the slammer and escaped with, is a charming psychopath who is just as keen to sing a full duet with you (as she does in one of Borderline’s most memorable scenes) as stab you.
Paul, as the lovesick mastermind behind the faux wedding and deadly actions, is a dangerous lovestruck villain whose ever-present cheeriness and severe face blindness make for a number of memorable moments. Even as he kidnaps or threatens Sofia, or attacks her allies like bodyguard Bell (Eric Dane), it’s done with an unsettling and chipper romantic nature. Paul claims to be hopelessly in love and destined to marry Sofia, and her protestations to the contrary never alter his bizarre conviction. As the film builds toward its memorable ending, his face blindness makes it clear that he’s in love with the idea of Sofia more than the person… resulting in a basketball player at the altar in a wedding dress.
Ray Nicholson delivers a terrific villain performance in Borderline.
Paul and Penny are two of the most memorable horror antagonists in recent memory, elevating Borderline as it embraces the strangeness of the ’90s. Penny is legitimately murderous, but it’s unsettling how she celebrates her villainous actions with detached but childlike joy. Alba Baptista gives her a slight air of mystery and, against all odds, charm, while Ray Nicholson creates a Paul whose relentless positivity and optimism amplify the surreality of the situation. It’s a full-bodied, committed performance, culminating in Paul’s solitary but hallucinatory end-credits car ride that reads like the famed ending of The Graduate was filtered through Mia Goth’s grinning Pearl credits sequence performance.
In its novel weaving together of fictionalized, odd ’90s cultural moments, Borderline nostalgically captures the era’s cultural weirdness and weaponizes it for a unique horror-comedy setting. What really makes this project work, however, is the creation of a pair of off-puttingly chipper villains. Their unhinged cheeriness amplifies the sense of danger while simultaneously making it a source of amusement. Their charismatic positivity is funny at times, but easily pivots into real danger for Sofia and her allies, and Nicholson and Baptista each sell the psychopaths with verve and aplomb. Borderline is strange, nostalgic, intense, and hilarious (often simultaneously), all thanks to two exceptional antagonists and a series of moments based on surreal ’90s reality.
