BORDERLINE (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Borderline, Magnet Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 13, 2025

The stalker who's the driving force of Borderline is "crazy" in that way of stories that don't care about mental illness. His name is Duerson (Ray Nicholson), and in the opening scene of writer/director Jimmy Warden's debut movie, he shows up at the Hollywood Hills mansion of a movie star/singer. This is a regular occurrence, it seems, because the celebrity's bodyguard knows the guy by name, knows that he needs some convincing to leave, and knows that he is relatively harmless. Before the bodyguard can realize that his last piece of information about the stalker is wrong, Duerson stabs him.

Is this meant to be a joke? That's the question that runs throughout Warden's movie.

It plays Duerson's generic insanity as a running gag, except when we're supposed to feel bad for the guy. It portrays the terror inflicted upon the celebrity as a source of tension, except when her egotistical ways are laughed at, and the occasional violence within the story as a brutal joke, except when Warden attempts to give a sense of its tragic aftermath. The movie is all over the place tonally, and maybe that's supposed to be some twisted reflection of Duerson's behavior and way of thinking—except he's not the protagonist and only provides the perspective of the story on occasion.

No, the movie simply doesn't seem to know what point it wants to make or, more distractingly, in what way it wants to tell this warped tale. It only seems to like one of its characters in any obvious way. Then again, can a movie really like a character whose violent death is teased and rescinded twice, just so we can spend more time with the characters with whom it can't decide what to do?

Duerson's the most obvious problem of the material, because he is alternately intended to be a serious threat to actress/singer Sofia (Samara Weaving), as well as anyone unlucky enough to be around her, and a source of wacky humor. Nicholson's performance isn't to blame for the character, since the actor does everything he can to make Duerson as sincerely intimidating, strangely sympathetic, and over-the-top laughable.

This is impressive work, if only because Nicholson moves so effortlessly through the movie's various modes. It's a shame, perhaps, that Warden might have made the actor an easy scapegoat for how unsure and erratic his own storytelling and filmmaking are here.

The story, set during the 1990s (for no reason except to fill the soundtrack with music of the period and to keep modern technology out of the plot), continues several months after Duerson's attack on Sofia's bodyguard. It almost killed Bell (an admirably subdued and genuine Eric Dane), who was just doing his job and wrongly assumed the best about the obviously sad and lonely stalker. After recovering, he goes back to work for Sofia, despite the worries of his daughter Abby (Yasmeen Kelders), and sure enough, Duerson escapes from the psychiatric facility where he was being held that very night.

While Sofia has some uncomfortable time with a pro basketball player—who likes her more than she likes him—named Rhodes (Jimmie Fails), Duerson, his old friend J.H. (Patrick Cox), and fellow escapee Penny (Alba Baptista) enact the stalker's plan to marry the celebrity. That involves abducting Bell and his family, breaking into the mansion, and maybe killing anyone who gets in their way. The details of the scheme are almost as confusing as Warden's staging of the particularly gruesome murder of another security guard. To some degree, the scene—involving a bottle, copious amounts of vomit, and a microwave—played for laughs or at least shock value, only for the camera to linger on a photo of the victim's daughter in the aftermath.

How are we supposed to feel about that juxtaposition or, for that matter, any of what precedes or follows that moment? If this is meant to be a comedy, it's one in bad taste at best or off-putting nihilism at worst. If it's intended to be a thriller, the constant attempts at humor undermine the suspense and the few times Warden acknowledges the basic humanity of any of his characters. If the goal is to mirror some notion of Duerson's contradictory nature, why does the screenplay focus more on Bell and Sofia than the stalker, who, again, is only established as a non-specific brand of plot-convenient "crazy"?

Borderline mainly seems intent on trying to shock with its broad characters, humor, satire, and plotting. All of these elements are so broadly defined, however, that the only shocking aspect of the movie is how incompetent it often comes across.

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