It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned a word on Bora, the latest independent thriller debut from actress, producer and filmmaker Tiffany Toney. The movie was shot several years ago and has since run the post-production gamut followed by screenings and a subsequent release on Amazon Prime Video as well as FAST platform, Tubi.
The concept here isn’t too dissimilar from other films you may have seen. Invariably, it’s a rich take on a popular angle venturing into the psychological, with a sexy, chilling twist that serves the film’s rewarding narrative. Enter Ajima Cole who inaugurates our story in the role of Elon, a young woman whose idyllic life with boyfriend Shawn (Gichi Gamba) is about to take a life-shattering tumble ahead after a chance (we’ll say) bumping-into with a wandering junkie named Bora (Toney).
Well into the first half of Bora, the viewer is introduced to a bevy of story elements hinting at something that feels much more supernatural than it is. For this, Bora feels like the creative brainchild that were to be born if Antoine Fuqua and Ridley Scott got together one day and did a few lines of coke along with some E after watching one too many episodes of The Twilight Zone (I choose these metaphors carefully in an effort to be less obvious in my overview, unless you’re a staunch cinephile and also new to this movie, then I applaud you for picking up on my rhetoric.)
The film descends further into its cerebral maddening of the senses, long after Bora has charmed her way into Elon’s car, and quite possibly, her head. Both Elon and Bora are perpendicular to one another, with the former seeing herself as a law-abiding citizen who has never been pulled over before. That dichotomy gets a searing underscore as the two ladies acquaint themselves with each other, casting an otherwise introspective spotlight on blackness and what it really entails.
There’s a implied social commentary here long after the film begins, and it stands as one of the most thrilling aspects about Bora that sets our two main characters apart from one another, just as Elon wrestles with the predicament she’s in. A key story element in Bora pertains to events of backlash against police brutality, a component that, while subliminal, further adds to the film’s chilling fervor as we witness the events of Elon and Bora unfold. As the film tells it, there’s quite a bit of hell to pay in Bora’s macabre world, and the bodies she’s leaving in her wake, remarkably, won’t be the most shocking bonus.
And that’s exactly where Toney compels the viewer to place its focus. Toney’s Bora is as enigmatic as she is entrancing. She’s voluptuous. She’s irresistible. She’s headstrong. A taker. She knows what she wants, how to get it, and who to go through to acquire it. She’s toxic, wild, wicked and without limits to her madness. She’s also wise to the world around her, and determined as well as determinative. Underscoring all of these is the fact that Bora, unlike Elon, is seasoned in the knowledge of the grim realities that come with being a dark-skinned female in the eyes of America’s patriarchal divide, idealistic and clueless.
Indelibly, there’s a tangential truth to these things that prove pivotal to Elon. There’s a flashback moment Bora that occurs later in the film that hints at something way more embedded and troubling about Elon, and even as I’m unsure about this type of structural placement regarding her character development, there’s a purposefulness here that I’m willing to accede to. It’s par for the course with a few other films before it, and hopefully for this you can see why I’m being vague in all my panegy.
What stands out with Bora is Elon’s crippling naiveté compelling her to learn so many things the hard way, all before a moment of foreshadowing in the second half. This ultimately brings her to confront Bora in an effort to take control of an explosive situation that may have already reached a point of no return. Despite all this, there are moments that bring you to see just how hand-in-hand Elon and Bora are in this twisted and dark tale. Even as the beleaguered Elon struggles to hold on to what normalcy she has left, there’s a mindfulness in Bora’s aberrant madness. Above all her other deliniated traits, Bora is a stone-cold killer, a fact that Elon least expects until the shoe drops mid-way into the movie, when during a drug buy that goes awry, a moment of vulnerability results in watching Bora cancel the life subscription of her would-be rapist with nothing more than a bloody box-cutter.
Toney’s performance presents a nebulous and complex persona you can both detest and sympathize with. You can’t help but sit with Elon and ask yourself amidst every troubling conundrum and violent encounter, if she’s savior, or foe, and even then, you’re still asking the wrong question. It helps if you keep an eye on Bora’s Dia De Los Muertos mask throughout the movie.
Typically, analyzing what we see with our eyes is sine qua non to any moviegoing experience, and Toney knows this as well as any filmmaker. Alas, what better way to spend a summer of lockdowns and imperiled film activity than to make an enticing thriller that borrows humbly from its predecessors, and achieving what it sets out to without being formulaic or pandering? Lithely and cleverly, Toney provides a worthwhile answer you can’t ignore in Bora, a salient thriller fusing indomitable independent genre creativity with music and a sense of daring that compliments the talent on hand.
Founded on strong performances, a neon-noir allure and psychedelic energy to compliment the film’s sexually-charged mystique and horror, Bora delivers a sultry, satisfying indie psychological horror with a myriad of characteristics. Topped with an adjacent queer twist, a ghoulish underpinning and salient messaging, and you get a freshman feature that delivers a great deal on all it promises. To boot though, with its completion during one of the most tumultuous crises in American history, its ceremony comes rightly-earned as an illuminating first for Toney in her ongoing career in the arts. A certain screenwriter I won’t name here would be proud.
Bora will next screen fot the Essence Film Festival in New Orleans on June 30. Follow the movie on Instagram for updates.
