The Divide

There was a time that I made it a point of honor as a movie goer to complete watching every movie I ever started. I figured I would never ever see anything so bad that it would prevent me from sticking it out to the end. Lately, however, I start a movie and ditch it once things stop being interesting.

The Divide was one creepy claustrophobic apocalyptic closed roomed drama. The movie starts with people fleeing out of a building where a city is under missile attack. We don't know the city and the people clothing give no indication of a certain time or place in history.

As people rush in all directions, a small group manage to get to the basement of a building occupied by a building super (Michael Biehn - from Terminator fame) and from there it becomes a battle of wills and survival. The acting is uniformly excellent with Biehn and Rosanna Arquette (as a distraught mother) being the most effective and surprising.

The movie is very smart about the passage of time. We never know if hours, days, weeks or months have passed. This technique keeps the viewer unsteady on their feet.

The acting is uniformly excellent with Biehn and Rosanna Arquette (as a distraught mother) being the most effective and haunting and surprising.

After the basement sanctuary is attacked by soldiers in environmental suits,  the decision is made to explore outside and see what shape the world has been left in. It will spoil things to tell you what happens next. Suffice it to say I didn't turn off the film. My questions mounted with few easy explanations forthcoming.

The paranoia further increases to being almost unbearable at times. You know that nothing good is going to happen as more and more time passes without freedom, answers, or hope. It's not the same kind of bleak ennui I usually enjoy because the madness of these survivors comes from events totally out of their control. Every character flaw is exposed and their are few if any noble heroes here - just regular folks pushed to their limits.

The appearance of the medical effects of radiation further dehumanize everyone until all I was wishing for was a happy red balloon to blow by just to put a smile on my face. That didn't happen.

In this graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller, nine strangers-all tenants of a New York high rise apartment escape a nuclear attack by hiding out in the building's bunker-like basement.

Trapped for days underground with no hope for rescue, and only unspeakable horrors awaiting them on the other side of the bunker door, the group begins to descend into madness, each turning on one another with physical and psycho-sexual torment.

As supplies dwindle, and tensions flare, and they grow increasingly unhinged by their close quarters and hopelessness, each act against one another becomes more depraved than the next. While everyone in the bunker allows themselves to be overcome by desperation and lose their humanity, one survivor holds onto a thin chance for escape even with no promise of salvation on the outside .



It's all quite grim and doesn't go in the direction that I expected it to go and for that reason I recommend it, if only to remind everyone to store a variety of canned goods in your basement. You just never know when you will be sick of eating cold beans.

THE DIVIDE is strong stuff for those who like their drama pitch dark, richly perverse, and borderline abusive--I felt almost as wrung-out as the characters when it was over. The downbeat ending manages to convey a serene acceptance of the inevitable that's haunting.

8/10