Wednesday Horror: The Borrower

Films: The Borrower
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Strap in, folks. This is going to be interesting.

I do try to give each movie I watch a fair shot, but I had literally no real hopes for The Borrower. The fact that it was directed by John McNaugton as the film following Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer did not fill me with hope. There were several reasons for this. First, this movie has not managed to show up on the They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They list of 1000 best-reviewed horror movies. That puts it as less than a lot of really shitty movies. Second, the top-billed actor is Rae Dawn Chong. Not even the potential awesomeness of having Antonio Fargas in the cast can counteract that.

One After Another

Film: Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer; Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen (Aileen); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Henry).

I’ve known for a couple of years that when I got to either of today’s films I’d watch them on the same day; they’re a natural double feature based on the titles if nothing else. I’ve put them off until now mostly because I was nervous about one of them and didn’t have a great deal of interest in the other. Still, I’m running out of films, and with February being a down month for me in general, it was time to knock them out. While both films (obviously) deal with serial killers, they couldn’t be more different.

Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer is a documentary about the title character, the first convicted female serial killer in American jurisprudence history. It is one of the oddest documentaries I’ve ever seen in that it would seem to be tailor-made to be a lurid story, but it’s not. Rather than focusing on the seven murders Wuornos was accused of (she was ultimately convicted of six), it instead focuses on the people around her, many of whom decided to associate with her specifically to make money from her crimes.