Director Jimmy Warden on blackly comedic thriller ‘Borderline’: “It feels like I’m constantly thinking about ways to kill people”

Posted On June 23, 2025June 23, 2025

Writer and director Jimmy Warden’s feature-length filmmaking debut, Borderline, has been a long time coming, with the screenplay first gaining attention when it made the Black List in 2020.

Production on the comedy-tinged psychological thriller began in late 2022 and was released in March 2025, so it’s been a half-decade labour of love for Warden, known for penning Netflix’s slasher sequel The Babysitter: Killer Queen and the deranged sort-of true story with several dramatic flourishes, Cocaine Bear.

“It was a long, long road,” he admitted, “Like, not even just from writing the script, but even from finishing the movie. But I’m just so happy that places like Magnolia are willing to take a chance on these smaller budget films and put them out in the theatres.”

Unfolding in the mid-1990s, Borderline follows Ray Nicholson’s Paul Duerson, an infatuated and more than a little sociopathic fan obsessed with Samara Weaving’s mononymed pop star and actor character, Sofia. After being institutionalised for turning up at her house, stabbing her bodyguard, Eric Dane’s Bell, and breaking into her home, he soon escapes to realise the fantasy in his head.

As far as Paul is concerned, he and Sofia are destined to be together, and he’d love nothing more than to make things official by getting married. Obviously, she doesn’t feel the same way, plunging them into a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. He’s assisted by Alba Baptista’s fellow escapee, Penny, forcing Sofia, Bell, and Jimmie Fails’ professional basketball player, Rhodes, into a nightmarish battle for survival.

The undefined 1990s setting was chosen for several reasons, including the lack of technology. “I mean, home invasions are pretty tough to do when you have cellphones,” Warden explained. Beyond that, a celebrity relationship tied to the film’s overarching themes was another important touchstone.

“One thing, maybe it wasn’t necessarily the driving factor, but there was always the underlying inspiration of the Madonna/Dennis Rodman relationship, the fact that those types of stalkers were more prevalent in the ’90s, whereas now you can kind of stalk people from on Instagram, from your toilet. I also just love the time period and the music, and I think that if you can create those boundaries and work within them, it’s pretty fun, and it puts the actors in a place and a time. So it’s helpful for them as well.”

As painful as it is to say, setting Borderline in the ’90s makes it a period film, but Paul’s obsession and parasocial relationship with Sofia is still thematically timely and relevant in the internet and social media age, something Warden alluded to while reiterating why the story had to be set three decades ago.

“Yeah, totally,” he agreed, adding, “Back then, you actually had to ring someone’s doorbell, whereas now I think there is just this access that we have to celebrities or friends or anyone. Like, you can stand behind someone at the supermarket and pretty much be able to pull up their social media page and then have access to the ins and outs of their life. And I think that’s relatively new, and people are still figuring out their boundaries in the social media landscape.”

On paper, it should be challenging, nearly impossible, to make someone like Paul even semi-likeable. After all, he stabs a guy and breaks into someone’s house in the opening scene, but it’s a testament to Nicholson’s committed performance that he somehow manages to make the deranged stalker an engaging, almost tragically endearing figure.

“That was his concern from our first meeting,” Warden recalled his initial conversations with the second-generation star. “I think that it’s really a testament to his ability as an actor. I think that his taking this character and finding empathy in him, that’s sort of what we try to do by the end of the movie.”

The director also praised Nicholson’s co-stars, with Dane showing “empathy” in the opening scene and Weaving’s Sofia serving an essential function by standing her ground, both of which helped deepen and develop their relationships with Paul: “If she was going to play it more freaked out the entire time, then I think that we would have a little more trouble finding that empathy with the character.”

Despite Borderline making it clear that Sofia is a wildly successful recording artist and occasional movie star, the film never plays any of her original music or even offers details about her life and backstory, which was a strategic decision on the director’s part to place the audience in Paul’s shoes, having the viewer know more about his idealised version of her than the real person.

“That was definitely a conversation,” he confirmed. “If we can create this bubble around her that we never really puncture, then maybe it puts us more into Paul’s shoes if you only see what’s on the surface. In terms of the music, there were a couple of ideas and original songs. And then, when we found that character in Paul with Ray, we all decided that it was better if we kept the Sofia character at arm’s length.”

Weaving has become one of modern horror’s favourite ‘scream queens‘ through her turns in the likes of The Babysitter duology, Ready or Not, and Scream VI, but Borderline doesn’t require that kind of performance. Instead, Sofia is more reserved and introspective, and in dealing with the unwanted advances of an infatuated fan, it was only natural that a Martin Scorsese classic was mentioned.

“The King of Comedy was definitely a huge inspiration,” Warden confirmed. “Even in prep, it was at the top of the list of movies that I wanted everybody to watch”. Referencing the scene where Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard have Jerry Lewis tied to a chair, the filmmaker elaborated on how he wanted to channel the same atmosphere.

“He definitely fears for his life, but he’s treating the scene like they’re fucking crazy, rather than playing it so sweaty, so fearful for his life, and that one lets the comedy play out of how weird these two are. It put the audience in Samara’s shoes, and with Sam, we’ve seen her play the final girl running for her life so many times, so it was always an interesting thing if we took more of the Jerry Lewis approach to it.”

A hard film to quantify, Borderline touches base with jet-black comedy, psychological thrillers, home invasion horror, and even a touch of screwball, often within the space of the same scene. Understandably, Warden knew he had a difficult needle to thread, with his vision coming together in post-production.

“I mean, there’s a way to cut this movie that plays just as a comedy,” he suggested. “I think that’s what interested us, was being able to flip it on a dime, where you’re like, ‘This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen’, and you’re laughing, and it gets violent to the extent where you have to laugh at a certain point in a more campy kind of way.”

Describing finding that sweet spot as his “North Star”, Warden discovered through screening his film that “if you go too far overboard in one direction or the other, you can start to lose the audience”. From his perspective, they’re golden if they make it through the first scene: “Then I think they’re just along for the ride”.

In addition to Sofia being a pop star, music was a major influence on Borderline in multiple ways. With the director alluding to her being a Madonna surrogate, it’s easy to infer that the title came from Madonna’s 1983 song of the same name. Instead, it was inspired by a cover version that ties neatly into its themes.

“The whole movie was sort of inspired by The Flaming Lips’ cover of ‘Borderline’ because it just changed the way I was thinking about the song in my head that I’ve heard 1000 times. You hear it from a different perspective, from a man’s perspective, and it starts to get a little creepy, and then you listen to the lyrics, and you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe this is sort of a stalking obsession tune rather than a heartbreak’.”

Another unusual ’90s reference that becomes a recurring gag throughout the film is a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle from Junior, the comedy where Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant. “We sent that to Schwarzenegger and he approved it within like 24 hours,” Warden gleefully recalls.

“It’s such a dumb joke,” he confessed grinning, “but it gives me such joy to see a Junior puzzle onscreen.” Puzzles are a big thing at home, too, with Warden sharing that Weaving, his wife, is obsessed with them, and he even sneaked a couple of Easter Eggs from their home life into the movie that nobody else would understand.

“Our only arguments are when she puts teabags in the sink,” he recalled. “When we first started dating, she’s from Australia, and they don’t really have disposals there. So she thought you could throw trash down the sink. So she would always put her teabags in there, and then one time, the sink clogged up. And I had a plumber come over, and he pulled out all of these strings of teabags, like 100 of them, just wrapped around the disposal. So she does that in the movie, which no one would ever notice, but it just gives us a little giggle.”

Another standout scene involves Baptista’s unhinged Penny and Sofia engage in an unexpected rendition of Celine Dion’s ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ that devolves into a knock-down, drag-out brawl, which began as a dream sequence based on another song that eventually evolved into a very real fight sequence.

“It was initially written as a Billy Joel ‘Piano Man’ cover, and it was written as a dream in the script that Rhodes thought he was singing after he was knocked down,” the filmmaker elaborated. “And then, as we went further and further into the development process, ended up landing Celine Dion, which I think fits the moment better, because it’s female pop star, Penny thinks that she’s way better than Sofia, and we decided that it was the kind of thing that would happen in the scope of this movie.”

“She’d actually be crazy enough to want to do a duet in that moment in time,” Warden said, with Baptista’s performance being the turning point. “So then we played it as, ‘This is actually happening in real life’. You’re constantly questioning yourself, like, ‘Is this too weird? Do we go too far?’ And to the producers’ credit, they were always pushing me to go with what I wanted to do. Screw the conventions.”

As a writer and director, from The Babysitter: Killer Queen to Cocaine Bear and now Borderline, Warden has been walking the tightrope between horror and comedy. He doesn’t want to be restricted to any genre in particular, but he’ll always write what he wants to write, however he wants to write it.

“I’ve written more comedy than anything else, and I think that’s the thing that will continue throughout anything that I write or direct,” he declared. “But whether it’s always violent or bloody or gory, I don’t think that’s something I’m particularly beholden to and that I only need to do.”

However, there is a caveat: “Of course I’ll keep doing that. Sometimes it feels like I’m constantly thinking about ways to kill people. And that sort of is my job, and I like doing that. I have fun writing that stuff. But, for instance, I just wrote a romantic comedy. I’ve written down the middle, action films, straight comedies, buddy comedies and stuff like that, all that I’m hoping will eventually see the light of day or get made. I mean, in terms of the horror stuff, I’m still a huge horror fan. I feel like I’ll keep doing that for the rest of my life or career.”

With music playing such an essential part in Borderline in terms of both its soundtrack, its relationship to several scenes, and its bearing on the character of Sofia, it makes perfect sense that if Warden were to leave horror behind, there’s one genre at the top of his wishlist. Again, though, with a twist.

“I think I would do a musical,” he pondered. “I think I would want to do an Oklahoma-like musical. I actually have something that I haven’t sent out, that I’m not sure I ever will, that is sort of in the vein of an Oklahoma musical, but it has a twist on it, updated to this century, and it’s more like inspired by it. But I don’t think anybody will ever make it. It’s too bizarre. But I would love to wake up tomorrow and just be doing that.”

An Oklahoma-inspired musical from the writer of Cocaine Bear and director of Borderline sounds like it’ll sell itself, so maybe one day Warden’s dream will become a reality.

Related Topics