filmthug movies, reviews & rants: The Divide

The Divide

As a nuclear fireball engulfs New York, a disparate group of survivors flees the unexplained attack, seeking shelter in the basement of their apartment building as the world above them collapses.

Luckily, the building super Mickey (Michael Biehn) is a survivalist nut who, ever since 9/11, has been gleefully anticipating the worst and has stocked the cellar with enough basic food and water to ride out the apocalypse. He just hadn’t expected to be sharing his refuge with so many uninvited houseguests, among them a trio of cocky, young jerks (Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Eklund & Ashton Holmes), weak lawyer Sam (Iván González) and his girlfriend Eva (Lauren Graham), middle-aged Delvin (Courtney B. Vance), fragile single mother Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette) and her teenage daughter Wendi (Abbey Thickson).

With the aid of a fire axe, Mickey immediately establishes his authority, sealing the door and decreeing that nobody will enter or leave the basement until the fallout beyond has reached a safe level. With tensions starting to build and petty bickering threatening to spill over into full-on violence, Delvin mans and operates the basement’s shortwave radio round the clock, trying to contact the outside world in the hopes of rescue.

Instead he attracts a force of biohazard-suited, assault rifle-toting attackers, who may be soldiers or just very well provisioned scavengers. They briefly invade the basement, kidnapping Wendi before welding shut the basement door, trapping the survivors inside and leaving them to their fate.

With supplies running low and the survivors starting to show signs of radiation sickness, tensions within the group start to escalate, fuelled by paranoia, despair and hunger. Splitting into factions, the survivors start to turn on one another with alpha-male Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and friend Bobby (Michael Ekland) challenging Mickey’s rule.

As the situation devolves into violence, torture, degradation, psychosexual torment and death, only the enigmatic Eva struggles to maintain any sense of decency. But when the chance of escape presents itself she finds herself forced into a vicious, desperate struggle for survival…

In times of recession (or are we officially now in a worldwide Depression?) the number of sci-fi and horror movies hitting the screens traditionally rises exponentially, so brace yourselves for the coming apocalypse. In the last couple of years we’ve already seen such rich and diverse apocalyptic visions as John Hillcoat’s The Road, Jim Mickle’s Stake Land, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense. We also have Marc Forster’s World War Z and Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day On Earth to look forward to as well as a new version of The Day Of The Triffids and Steve Carell and Keira ‘Thunderbird’ Knightley falling for each other in upcoming end of days rom-com Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World. It seems there is no end to end of the world flicks.

None of them however have imagined quite as dark, nasty and ugly a vision of the end of the world as Xavier Gens does in The Divide. Like Satre, Gens, director off the fantastic Frontier(s), obviously believes “Hell is other people,” and after watching The Divide, you will too. Gens’ survivors are a microcosm of society and the film’s horror lies not with attacking aliens, zombies or any other external vanquishable threat but in the steady erosion of the morality and values of an ostensibly decent collection of people. Gens exposes the fragility of the thin veneer of civilisation we all hide behind and the ease with which we regress to savagery once free of society’s rules and consequences. The group’s descent into squalid, feral madness isn’t only inevitable, it’s human nature. With no escape from their hellish prison, the survivors turn on one other, each individual pushed to the extremes of their natures, devolving into a pack of murderous, rape-happy monsters indulging their darkest fantasies and desires, willing to torture and kill each other over a can of beans, a bottle of water.

With the exception of one abortive exploratory foray into the outside world that has disastrous consequences, Gens wisely restricts the action to the basement. Making the most of its grimy claustrophobia, he turns the screws on his victims allowing minor tensions and disputes to bubble over into violence, allowing sexual jealousy and paranoia to gnaw at them before psychosis consumes them. The violence is brutal, bloody, cringe-inducing, and the degradation of Arquette in particular is stomach-churning. Like happening upon a car crash you’ll want to look away but will stare in rapt fascination as these friends and neighbours destroy one another.

The performances are flawless. Biehn hasn’t had a role this good since his psychotic Navy SEAL in The Abyss and his Mickey is a swaggering racist despot, a dog whose day has finally come. After years playing nice guy Peter on the interminable Heroes, Ventimiglia finally gets to show some acting chops as the cocky thrusting Josh while Arquette reminds you just how good an actress she could be with a fearless, devastating performance as the victimised Marilyn. As the cool, watchful Eva, horror veteran Lauren German is the closest thing the film has to a sympathetic character, a hero even, and she holds the film together with a subtle, restrained performance, the calm unblinking eye at the centre of the storm. But The Divide’s real revelation is Michael Eklund whose intense, committed performance as Bobby is both terrifying and sympathetic, a sinewy all too human monster.

The Divide is not an easy film to watch. But then, it shouldn’t be. It’s a movie about the end of the world. It should depress you, it should disgust you, it should haunt you. And it will. Bleak, intense, claustrophobic and horrific, The Divide is a hard shining jewel of a film, a post-apocalyptic movie that dares to suggest that the worst thing about the end of the world may be surviving it. Dark, violent and disturbing, The Divide will devastate you.

David Watson

UK Cinema Release Date:

Directed by:

Xavier Gens

Written by:

Karl Mueller, Eron Sheean

Produced by:

Ross M. Dinerstein, Juliette Hagopian, Nathaniel Rollo, Darryn Welch

Starring: