With the UK release of the critically-acclaimed horror Borderland now in full gruesome swing, Screenjabber's Adam Stephen Kelly caught up with star Rider Strong (Cabin Fever, Boy Meets World) to discuss his experience with the film
What originally attracted you to Borderland?
The fact that it was based on a true story was pretty remarkable to me, and actually the more I learned about the real events the less fantastic the movie actually seemed to me. What I really liked about it was Zev Berman, the writer/director; I had seen his first movie, Plain Dirty, and I just loved the performances in that, and I knew that even as a script, Borderland was really a straightforward horror film in a lot of ways, it's a lot like Saw or Hostel and slasher films, and for someone like Zev to make sure that the characters were very real and the acting was very raw, and that he would be interested in the human element and not want to push it over the top or make it cartoony in any way, that's really when I jumped on board.
It's interesting to note that in the “making of” feature on the DVD, Sean Astin refers to the movie as a splatter film, to which Zev Berman quickly cuts him off by calling the film a drama. Who do you agree with, and do you think there is enough of a compromise between the intensity of the story and the blood and guts to call it a drama?
I think about the tension of the film, I feel that's the central question. I think that the idea was always to appeal to both audiences, and I think that where we're going to lose some of the fans of Hostel and Saw is that the story is a little slower and spends more time developing characters before killing them off, but I think that was the risk that Zev always wanted to take. I wouldn't call it a drama, it's definitely a horror film, I would just put it in a different category. It's certainly not torture porn. There's just a different type of realism that Zev is interested in. Eli Roth, who did the Hostel movies, he's always going to go for more of a cartoony sensibility, he's always going to go for a laugh. Those are the moments he prides himself on because they're the types of horror films he loves. I think that it's going to be less commercially successful as a result, that's probably a guarantee, but critically Borderland has gotten really well received because of that.
In the film, when you and your character's friends venture down to the border, the town comes across on screen as such an alien world, even though it isn't so far from home. Did you genuinely feel the same way when you were shooting, or was that just movie magic?
It was exactly that world. We shot in Tijuana, which is right south of LA. When we got there, we started rehearsing right away, and the way we were rehearsing was that the main three characters and Zev walked around Tijuana in character and running scenes. Lots of shady stuff goes on and I think it's an important distinction that we had to make while we were filming in that it's not Mexico, it's not the United States, it's a bizarre border town, and Tijuana is that somewhere in between. The laws of both countries are sort of bent in these places and there's cracks that people fall through. It was fun in some regards, but it was also a little crazy. It was a great immersive experience.
What was it like working with Sean Astin, and how did you find his performance?
Working with Sean was like a dream come true to me as I was the biggest Goonies fan. He was a great guy and he's an incredibly inventive actor, he thinks a lot like a director, so he would walk into these scenes and add so much. There would be the scene like the one where I'm all chained up and he comes to get me, and he would be like, “No no no, can I get like a really big set of bolt cutters? I want to scare this guy,”. And sure enough, he comes walking into the scene with these giant bolt cutters and cuts my chains. It was so much more effective and cinematic than just walking in with a set of keys and unlocking me. He had an endless flow of ideas. For him to bring in all that extra energy and inventiveness was incredibly helpful and it sold the scenes. I was really excited to work with him.