Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Borderless Fog’ on Netflix, An International Serial Killer Thriller

The latest crime-fiction offering from Netflix takes place on the Asian island of Borneo – specifically, on the border between Malaysian and Indonesian territory. When a body turns up on that border, it turns out to be two murders in one – a head paired with a body that doesn’t match. As more victims materialize, a quietly haunted detective from Jakarta works to solve the murders, which some locals attribute to a folktale about a ghost in the forest. But despite those eerie overtones, Borderless Fog is more crime procedural than horror tale.

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The Gist: It’s a great, lurid crime-movie hook: A decapitated dead body right on the edge of jurisdiction for one of two different areas – in this case, Malaysia and Indonesia, which both have areas on the large island of Borneo – turns out to be two murder cases in one when the head doesn’t actually match the rest of the corpse. More heads (and separated bodies) continue to roll throughout Borderless Fog , and visiting cop Sanja (Putri Marino) has to piece together who’s doing the killing, and why. Is it a serial murderer? Gangsters? A copycat attempting to cover a trail? Or does it have something to do with local lore about a ghost that haunts the nearby forest? The movie isn’t exactly a horror film; it’s just an old-fashioned mystery that includes one (fairly remote) supernatural possibility among its suspects.

What Will It Remind You Of?: The dark procedural elements, haunted cop, and whisperings of the supernatural bring to mind True Detective ; it has less menacing portent than your average True Detective episode, but it’s more manageable than your average True Detectiv e season. There are also hints of Christopher Nolan’s very good remake of Insomnia .

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Performance Worth Watching: Putri Marino, sporting cool tinted shades, is really front and center in the film, and she anchors it with a no-fuss charisma. She’s a guide to this border world who’s familiar with the general area but still learning about the specifics, which makes her a great conduit for audiences who find the setting intriguing but unfamiliar.

Memorable Dialogue: As it happens, the Netflix subtitle translation on this one isn’t always strong, rendering certain phrases a little clumsier than they probably are in the original Indonesian.

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Sex and Skin: None. This movie about serial decapitations is not, in fact, trying to be sexy.

Our Take: Like its title, Borderless Fog is both evocative and a little clunky. For U.S. procedural audiences, it provides a welcome break from the network-TV axis of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, exploring an area that does, at times, feel like the international version of the various towns in the non-L.A. seasons of True Detective . The central mystery has no shortage of suspects, Putri Marino’s Sanja makes a compellingly tenacious (and just plain cool-looking) heroine, and the Borneo atmosphere makes for a neat cinematic tourism. So what’s the problem? In the most basic terms, there isn’t one; the director and co-writer, who just goes by Edwin, assembles the pieces with an efficient style, and the eventual solution manages to not feel like a cop-out, a cheat, or simply too predictable. But several elements turn from potboiler to boilerplate – most noticeably the presence, and tedious parceling out of, Sanja’s obligatory haunted backstory. It’s particularly disappointing because while the rest of the cast is fine enough for this type of mystery thriller, Sanja is the only character who really pops, and as such, doesn’t deserve to be saddled with a moral dilemma with ham-fisted (yet, at the same time, weirdly tenuous) connections to the murder case at hand.

Our Call: Borderless Fog isn’t exactly a revelation; even to U.S. audiences who might not be familiar with its cultural context, it manages to offer plenty of familiarity.  But if you want a new crime picture with an interesting location and quietly compelling lead character that gets the job done in under two hours, definitely STREAM IT.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

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