Borderland somehow exceeds our expectations of how bad this could get. It takes these completely worn out concepts and puts them in a chaotic and random twist. Any sense of excitement or fun is immediately dashed and the next pointless scene is thrown in front of us. Every moment of potential impact is quickly abandoned to jump to the next absurd situation. Every situation where there’s a chance to stage some great, video game-inspired action is botched and we get a gratuitous, unfunny line from one of the characters instead.

As for the plot, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) is presumably kidnapped by renegade soldiers Roland (Kevin Hart) and Krieg (Florian Munteanu, who plays the only halfway entertaining character in the film). Lilith’s mission is to rescue Tina from the planet Pandora. The viewer’s mission is to stay awake. Pandora is said to be a place full of dangerous creatures, much like the Pandora in James Cameron’s AvatarThis is not the only time Borderland reminds us of other films – Guardians of the Galaxy And Mad Max: Fury Road are basically fond memories of times gone by when watching this film. However, when we enter Pandora, the truly terrifying feeling we get is in the form of narrative exposition. Even in scenes where two characters are talking to each other, their dialogue is muffled and we instead get a narration explaining what they are talking about. Thankfully, this approach is cut off halfway through, in one of the film’s numerous examples of random choices.

Lilith initially comes across as an unnecessarily rude protagonist. She’s constantly shooting at everything, even a harmless robot, and yelling nasty remarks at everyone she meets. Poor Cate Blanchett is confused about whether to deliver her dialogue with conviction or leave the film’s shabbily designed sets and flee. Lilith seems to be given these traits just to come across as a mysterious and urbane figure. Of course, she has a traumatic childhood flashback. When she meets the good guys, Lilith immediately sides with them because… she’s the main character. It’s hard to understand anything in this film – the disjointed jumping from one scene or context to another can be tolerable in a video game, but in a film, structure and coherence are crucial.

As the film spirals into the abyss, it reaches a planet where redemption becomes impossible. When each scene begins, we know exactly how it’s going to end. None of the characters are given anything to care about, or anything at all, aside from a unique trait. The blonde girl who likes explosions. The black guy who says one-liners. The robot that annoys the viewer. None of the dialogue makes any impact; more like it feels like it was written on location. There are desperate attempts to generate emotion, bringing in a motherly angle, a friendship-betrayal angle, and an unloving child angle – the film throws it all at the viewer, with a background score that doesn’t care, and nothing sticks.

For people who are fans of the video game, watching Borderland will be a frustrating experience. For people who are not, watching Borderland is an extremely frustrating experience. Ultimately, the garbage-strewn desert landscape in which the film is set becomes a metaphor for the film itself.