The Borderlands (known in the US as Final Prayer) is a 2013 British Found Footage Horror film, written and directed by Elliot Goldner in his first (and so far, only) film. It stars Gordon Kennedy, Robin Hill, Aidan McArdle and Patrick Godfrey.
Deacon, a devout religious brother, is assigned by the Vatican to investigate a possible miracle that occurred in a recently-reopened 13th century church in Devon, England. A layman and tech expert named Gray Parker, as well as a priest named Father Mark Amidon, are his back-up. The local priest, Father Crellick, shows footage that he purports to show the altar moving by itself, but Deacon is dubious. From this fairly innocuous beginning, things begin to go downhill: strange noises in the night, a burning sheep outside their lodging, and the creeping sense that what happened was the wrong kind of miracle...
Not to be confused with the Borderlands franchise.
This work contains examples of:
- Bad People Abuse Animals: The town locals set fire to a sheep outside the investigators' cottage, an early sign that something isn't right about this area.
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: Doesn't get much bleaker or more horrific that not only is the pagan deity allegedly responsible for the strangeness Real After All, but that it's a gigantic, undergound Eldritch Abomination... And that you're stuck inside its digestive system.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The unfortunate pair of Deacon and Gray are lured into a tunnel that turns out to be the digestive system of some massive underground Eldritch Abomination that was worshiped as a pagan deity. Their last moments are spent screaming in agony as they melt in the great beast's stomach acids.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The beginning of the movie is actually relatively light in tone, developing the characters of the investigators and observing their dynamic. Of course, it gets much darker later.
- Downer Ending: Every major character ends up dying, with the two main ones dying in a particularly horrifying way, and there's no sign that the Eldritch Abomination will be stopped - or even that it can be stopped.
- Eaten Alive: What happens to Deacon and Gray at the end.
- Driven to Suicide: Father Crellick leaps off the church's bell tower out of fear and guilt that the so-called "miracle" was something worse.
- Eldritch Abomination: Or an Eldritch Location, depending on your view. Whatever it is that's going on with the church, it's been going on for a very long time, and there's something there that's alive and hungry.
- Folk Horror: While the initial tone is of Religious Horror, things get very pagan very quickly.
- Found Footage: The film was sold as "Paranormal Activity in a church". Although the question of how the footage was found is made particularly confusing by the ending.
- Foreshadowing: A few for the ending:
- As Deacon and Gray approach the church for the first time they see a dog attacking a rabbit and Gray muses “That’s nature for you, Deacon. Big stuff eating little stuff.” The film ends with them being digested by the implicitly gigantic Pagan Deity beneath the Church.
- While discussing belief in the pub, Gray talks about how Pagans worshiped physical, observable things, like the Sun and Moon, while Christians put their faith in unobservable higher powers. The Pagan's Deity turns out to be a physical entity rather than any kind of evil spirit like they were expecting.
- Genius Loci: The church's anomalies initially appear to be the result of building a church on the site of an old spot for pagan human sacrifice. Then it turns out that the church serves the same purpose now as it did then...
- Jerkass: Gray Parker is an abrasive, irritating presence at the start of the film, but straightens out as the situation grows dire.
- Meaningful Background Event: While outside the church for a smoke, Gray misses the tombstone with his name on it - when he's distracted by a bird cawing, the tombstone's name changes to Grace Parker instead.
- Religious Horror: The horror starts as this, before it turns out that God has nothing to do with what's going on at the church.
- Real After All: The Paegan Deity is real and the final two survivors find out the hard way being melted alive INSIDE it at the very end.
- Shown Their Work: The opening of the film follows Deacon on another assignment in Belém, Brazil, which is portrayed quite accurately down to the local slang.
- That's No Moon: Mark or rather, his re-animated corpse leads Deacon and Gray into a rather tight, foul-smelling passageway in the enormous labyrinth beneath the church, which would be unpleasant enough. Then the exit closes off with a curiously organic-looking membrane, the walls start to move, and it's become clear that the pair are trapped in the digestive system of an Eldritch Abomination.
