I never really know how to kick off these sorts of brutally negative reviews, so I suppose it is easiest to be blunt: Eli Roth’s Borderlands is a deeply terrible film. It briefly features a future fashion technology where people wear holographic masks that envelop their heads that looks rather impressive, and Cate Blanchett has a very fetching gold jacket. I can honestly say those two elements are the parts that I liked. Everything else is either dull, frustrating, or actively irritating.

This was hardly a surprise, since just following Borderlands shaky path to release revealed so many red lights and alarm bells that one could easily mistake it for a rave. Principal photography took place a full four years ago, with rumours Roth was removed partway as director and replaced with Deadpool‘s Tim Miller. Screenwriter Craig Mazin had his name taken off the credits. The film adapts the popular videogame of the same name – always a cause for concern – while promotional trailers showed off an excess of CGI and a desperately sweaty attempt at ‘irreverent’ humour. Hand on heart, I begin every film I see with a sincere wish for it to be good. After all, who wants to ever spend two hours watching something that isn’t? Despite that wish, Borderlands is exactly what it looks like: no compromised masterpiece, no divisive content, no cult appeal. This is simply bad filmmaking on all sides, and anybody that tells you differently is either trolling you or doesn’t know the first thing about narrative art.

Jaded bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is dispatched to the planet Pandora, where rogue soldier Roland (Kevin Hart) has kidnapped the daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) of a corporate boss (Edgar Ramirez). Once planet-side, Lilith finds herself unwillingly teamed up with Roland, her estranged foster mother Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the neurotic robot Claptrap (Jack Black) in the search for a hidden alien vault.

The screenplay is asinine and derivative, and more than one of the central characters is actively irritating to watch. Everything on-screen is rendered with a poorly developed CGI sheen; in previous decades a sci-fi potboiler set on a post-apocalyptic planet would have had the common sense to be shot on location with a shoestring budget. Stereotypes abound, the narrative is boring, and the weirdly high-profile cast seem barely capable of showing an interest in their work.

I’ve always figured there was a space in Hollywood for the anti-Oscars, where award-winning talent could have their previous statues taken away from them for egregious work. If this was a thing, Blanchett and Curtis would be feeling very nervous in the lead-up to awards season. Then again, given everything else, I am not sure I would have put in much effort either.