70
An exciting, intelligent mix of romance, Nordic noir, social realism, and supernatural horror that defies and subverts genre conventions.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Screen International by Allan Hunter
One of the things that truly impresses about Border is the way Abbasi successfully juggles so many disparate plot elements and then brings them together like a well tuned orchestra.
83
Abbasi grounds the narrative in an emotional foundation even as it flies off the rails.
80
Border is a piece of modern gothic, a far out midnight movie which delivers on the WTF-ery while maintaining a surprisingly big and generous heart.
83
Unique, unforgettable and cathartic, Border is an oddball, but poignant cult classic in the making. Abbasi’s sincerity wisely avoids caricature and mocking his marginalized characters and in doing so he crafts a surprisingly humanist and artful story of love for the diminished and dismissed outsiders of the world.
83
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes Border. A thematically rich and deeply strange blend of romantic drama, magical-realist fantasy, and crime thriller, Sweden’s official entry to this year’s Academy Awards splits the difference between the highbrow cringe comedy of "Toni Erdmann" and the lowbrow cop fantasy "Bright."
83
The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor
Border is only really at its best when focusing on Tina’s rediscovery of her true nature.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
As a timely yarn about the mistreatment of minorities, both in Sweden and worldwide, Border is rich in allegorical layers. But as a thriller at least partially rooted in supernatural genre conventions, its relentlessly dour Nordic glumness drags a little. Social realism and magical realism make uneasy bedfellows.
75
Border is dark and unsettling and proudly deranged.
100
It’s not quite horror, crime, or comedy — it really just is “fantastic,” in every sense of the word.
weird - different - unexpected