Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

a_baron This is a fairly original film, unfortunately original does not necessarily mean good. Furthermore, it can't quite make up its mind what it wants to be: horror, comedy horror, black farce...An alien is apparently dumped on Earth from a flying saucer, and goes walkabout. Does he kill people? Sure, and no, he doesn't take over them as for example in "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", rather he rips off the victims head and places it on the old body. There is also a bit of a side plot, a feisty woman detective who shoots a dangerous criminal, then the guy escapes and comes after her. There is all sorts of other stuff too, but seriously, if you think the music is the best part of this film, few will disagree.

merklekranz Enjoyable schlock sci-fi that exceeds expectations. "The Borrower" is such an odd film that there was little hope for it to avoid cult status. You get "Scanners"- like exploding alien heads, with replacements being squeezed off innocent victims. The movie has unexpected humor, mostly relating to the hapless alien trying to fit in with homeless street people. Meanwhile, the police are understandably perplexed by the missing heads. The film is not perfect, but there is no denying that it has definite entertainment value. I especially liked the ending, which obviously pointed towards a non existent "Borrower"#2............... - MERK

DigitalRevenantX7 Plot Synopsis: An alien criminal is genetically devolved into human form & banished to Earth. The problem is that the process has made the creature's body extremely fragile to the point that during a fight with some rednecks shortly after arriving on Earth, its head explodes. The alien then wanders through a nearby city, frequently 'borrowing' the heads of various humans to use as a replacement for its own.Film Review: Three years after making the bleakly disturbing HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, director John McNaughton followed up on the success of his debut feature by making this moderately budgeted sci-fi / horror flick. The Borrower stars Rae Dawn Chong as a female cop on the hunt for a rapist (Neil Guintoli) as well as genre troopers Antonio Fargas (SHAKEDOWN; HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS) & Tom Towles (FORTRESS; the remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) making appearances.The film has had the indignity of being shut down after running out of money, the incompleted film being shelved for two years before seeing the light of day. In its current form, the film does not feature any noticeable narrative gaps except for a badly-rushed ending where the alien takes over an ambulance (one of the worst rush-jobs of an ending in recent genre history).Bad endings aside, the film's main problem is that it has a plot that is more along the line of "stuff happens" than resembling a fully fleshed-out story. The premise – that of an alien convict who goes around, squeezing people's heads off – is very limited in scope. The idea never develops into anything more than that. Sensing this, the screenwriters toss in a secondary plot about a pair of cops tracking down a rapist that, while a reasonably good story on its own, doesn't fit in with the rest of the film. If McNaughton, who has shown that he can make a serial killer story effective, persisted with the rapist angle, he would have had a decent film instead of the hodgepodge film shown here. On the acting front, almost everybody gives a decent performance. Chong & Don Gordon are well cast as the pair of cops. Guintoli, who would later (rather ironically) star in the Henry sequel, is suitably creepy as the rapist – the scene of him walking out of the hospital dressed in the uniform of a female cop that he had overpowered while said cop is lying on the hospital bed naked is the closest the film comes to disturbing the audience. As for the actors taking turns to play the alien, Tom Towles sets the bar high & gets surprisingly good mileage in playing an alien creature who is wandering around the city, mimicking the behaviour of passers-by & spending the night & following morning at a homeless shelter, but the other actors fail to match his performance exactly.In the film's favour, the dark humour that McNaughton brings into the mix gives us a rather dark sense of irony. In this regard, the alien represents a hapless harbinger of doom – everywhere it goes, people die, not always by its own hand (check out the scene where the alien is sitting in a café drinking coffee while a bloody robbery is taking place right next to it).The visual effects are wildly patchy – the bug-like alien in the beginning is quite good but the head-ripping effect is not as well made. Not to mention the fact that the continuity is lousy – not much is done to convince the viewer that the alien's body & head are different.

epeteet This movie is great! Lots of rad 80's/early 90s style special effects which means lots of gore and sweet mutation scenes! Excellent! The plot is basically about a super violent alien who is banished from his home planet and is sent to earth in the form of a human. The difference between him and a normal human is that he can rip people's heads off to replace his own which allows him to take their form. That being said you know there's gonna be plenty of decapitation action! Imagine THE HIDDEN (also a super rad movie) with less fast cars and more blood and slime. If that's not a killer plot i don't know what is. there is also a couple bare boobs in the mix too. Another plus is that the movie doesn't take itself too seriously. definitely a must for splatter fiends or anybody who digs campy horror!