“Borderlands” almost launched with a dreaded 0% on Rotten Tomatoes until YouTuber Grace Randolph stepped in.
Randolph, a prominent and at-times polarizing online personality known for “Beyond the Trailer,” revealed on X Thursday that her review of Eli Roth’s video game adaptation was the sole reason the film’s rotten score was bumped from a goose egg up to a measly 4%. (At pub time, two other reviewers brought the score up to 8% with 43 total reviews.)
“IT WAS ME!!!!!” Randolph said. “From 0% to 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. Whatever, man, I had a good time. Pretty crazy to set your review to post at 3 a.m. and discover you’re the ONLY one who liked it?! I never played the game, to be fair.”
Roth’s film is star-studded, but it wasn’t enough to save its quality. Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black all star in the film alongside Ariana Greenblatt and Florian Munteanu. It’s based on the first-person looter shooter games from GearBox.
The save from 0% says just about everything audiences need to know about how the rest of the early viewers are finding the film. TheWrap reviewer William Bibbiani was lock step with everyone but Randolph in his dislike of the movie.
“Roth’s adaptation of ‘Borderlands’ doesn’t have an interactive experience to fall back on, so all we get is an adaptation of the plot,” Baibbiani wrote. “An extremely liberal adaptation of the plot, like it got translated into a space alien’s language and then got translated back.”
TheWrap’s review concludes saying, “The biggest problem with Eli Roth’s ‘Borderlands’ isn’t that it’s bad, it’s that it’s not interesting enough to be bad. It’s mass-produced pabulum. All the edges have been sanded down so it can be safe and mainstream, but they went too far and there’s almost nothing left. It’s technically a movie based on ‘Borderlands.’ Not much else.”
“Borderlands” arrives in theaters Friday.
