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The Borrower

Play trailer Poster for The Borrower R 1991 1h 32m Sci-Fi Play Trailer Watchlist
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30% Tomatometer 10 Reviews 27% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
An alien is banished from his planet and sentenced to live on Earth in human form. There's one problem with his disguise, though -- every so often, his human head explodes, revealing his true identity. This leaves the alien with no choice but to intermittently pop off the heads of arbitrary people and use them until it's time for a replacement. Meanwhile, officers Diana (Rae Dawn Chong) and Charles (Don Gordon) begin to trace the trail of headless bodies back to their extraterrestrial source.
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The Borrower

Critics Reviews

View All (10) Critics Reviews
Kathleen Maher Austin Chronicle Rated: 2/5 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 2/5 Jun 17, 2005 Full Review Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Not without being somewhat entertaining in a childish way. Rated: C+ Jan 26, 2005 Full Review Spence D. IGN Movies Rated: 3/5 Feb 10, 2004 Full Review Daniel M. Kimmel Worcester Telegram & Gazette Rated: 3/5 Feb 8, 2004 Full Review Jeffrey Westhoff Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL) Rated: 2/5 May 14, 2003 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (17) audience reviews
Todd B This movie is a weird with a roach like alien space policing a white man prisoner alien. And then changing heads every so often even a dog. It even got freaky, when the guy eat a spoonful of cream corn with a mouse in it. Whereas, he even sucked up all of the pint of vodka or whatever up. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 12/15/24 Full Review Audience Member Really silly body swap movie. This premise has been done to death, so you're not likely to be seeing something new, but it's fun and has some performances and situations that are a riot. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/09/22 Full Review Audience Member Before The Bone Collector was this forgettable and similarly themed thriller. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Audience Member Classic silliness. An alien is made to look human and exiled to Earth as a punishment...where he gets to keep killing, ripping off heads and wearing women's sunglasses. Despite this movie being incredibly silly, there is some interesting social commentary on our desensitization of violence and automatic devaluation of the poor. Quite good actually and very entertaining. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member It was like two different movies fighting with each other to be on the screen. One movie: An alien comes to earth and needs to steal people's heads by ripping them off and placing them on his body. The other movie: A street-wise cop is trying to stop an escaped criminal. You'd think they mesh together, but they really don't. Maybe at the end they sort of do, but it was entirely unnecessary. Besides, the ending is very anticlimactic and solves absolutely nothing (it almost seemed as if they were trying to leave the door open for a sequel). I like the comedy/sci-fi/horror thing they were going for, but the whole Rae Dawn Chong storyline of the movie gets unnecessarily dark at one point (a woman cop gets beat down, tied up, and raped). What was the point? It brought down the mood of the movie and sapped out some of the fun. Still, there's lots of blood and gore, some memorable and funny scenes (the dog being one of them), and it was an okay watch. This movie kind of deserves a DVD treatment, but I guess this will just be one of those forgotten VHS movies that many will remember from the video store days only to be forgotten over time. If you find a bootleg it's worth checking out. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member This was one of those movies that was so awful it was funny. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Borrower

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Movie Info

Synopsis An alien is banished from his planet and sentenced to live on Earth in human form. There's one problem with his disguise, though -- every so often, his human head explodes, revealing his true identity. This leaves the alien with no choice but to intermittently pop off the heads of arbitrary people and use them until it's time for a replacement. Meanwhile, officers Diana (Rae Dawn Chong) and Charles (Don Gordon) begin to trace the trail of headless bodies back to their extraterrestrial source.
Director
John McNaughton
Producer
R.P. Sekon, Steven A. Jones
Production Co
Cannon Pictures Inc., Atlantic Entertainment Group, Vision Pictures
Rating
R
Genre
Sci-Fi
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 1, 2009
Runtime
1h 32m
Sound Mix
Surround
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)
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