Borderlands debuts with shockingly low score on Rotten Tomatoes

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

Director Eli Roth’s newest release, Borderlands, has been dealt a hard blow by critics whose dismal reviews have left the sci-fi action with a shockingly low score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The star-studded movie – an adaption of the popular video game – follows bounty hunter Lilith (played by two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett) as she teams up with a ragtag group of misfits to find a missing girl on her home planet.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Gina Gershon and Ariana Greenblatt also feature.

Ahead of its August 9 release in theaters, Borderlands sits at just four percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. The score represents the percentage of professional critical reviews that are positive.

Early reviews have torn Borderlands apart, with The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey calling it “a total disaster.”

“Wildly miscast actors and an impenetrable script make this long-delayed actioner alienating to fans of the game and incomprehensible to the casual viewer,” she argued, warning gamers that the movie “may strike terror into your heart.”

Empire’s Dan Jolin similarly labeled it a “botched Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe” in his two-star review. “It’s sloppily assembled, too, smacking of nervy, too-many-cooks post-production,” he said.

Peter Debruge agreed in his review for Variety, writing: “For all practical purposes, this could be a generic Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff where the cantankerous ensemble has guns instead of superpowers.”

“A maddening self-contradiction, Borderlands is too messy and too neat, too much and not enough,” IndieWire’s Alison Foreman wrote.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph’s Tim Robey said: “There are snatches of crude enjoyment to be had, if you venture in with basement-level expectations, and manage to ignore some dire third act CGI.”

This is a “stale and stubbornly unexciting sci-fi action comedy,” David Rooney wrote for The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s conceivable that longtime fans of the video game might get more out of Borderlands, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Borderlands is one of Roth’s first comedies. He’s better known for helming low-budget horror movies such as Thanksgiving (2023), Knock Knock (2015) and Hostel (2005).

According to Variety, the production of Borderlands is estimated to have cost approximately $115m, while the marketing and distribution efforts cost around $30m. Although, as of August 7, nearly 60 percent of its production costs were covered by international ticket presales, an insider told Variety.

Borderlands is out in theaters on Friday (August 9).