The Divide begins at the instant a nuclear missile hits a city. Some occupants of a building run into a basement and hide from the carnage. From this point on these survivors begin their descent into a hell of their own making as madness and primal aggression take hold.
This is a pretty unpleasant film to tell you the truth. The levels of degradation that the people in the bunker resort to is fairly grim. Physical, verbal and sexual violence all manifest themselves as these survivors lose touch with their humanity. They are not a particularly nice bunch of people to begin with, so this does pose some problems for us as an audience empathizing with any of them. Nevertheless, the film does generate quite a bit of suspense and there are some very unpleasant moments of nastiness. So it does work in a brutal in-your-face kind of way. And this is the movie's chief selling point.
While the setting is almost exclusively limited to the bunker, there is one unusual moment where one of the survivors is able to exit the confines of the building and come briefly into contact with the enemy. It's a very bizarre sequence where the mysterious bad guys appear to be storing children – one of which they earlier snatched from the bunker - in incubators. The children look either dead or blinded. It's horrific and utterly strange. Immediately after this the mysterious enemy weld our heroes back into their bunker and are never seen again. After this point the microcosm of the bunker just goes from bad to worse, as some inhabitants go mad and others sadistically insane.
Acting is OK. Michael Biehn overacts big time and fairly chews up the scenery throughout. Rosanna Arquette has an extremely unpleasant role. The other actors vary from being unpleasant psychopaths to negligible people. But the pacing is good and the limited setting doesn't affect things too much as the film keeps ramping the tension up. Overall, The Divide is a nasty movie with a very pessimistic view of how life in these extreme conditions will play out. If you like apocalyptic films on the more grimy and violent side of the spectrum then this is one to see.
This is a pretty unpleasant film to tell you the truth. The levels of degradation that the people in the bunker resort to is fairly grim. Physical, verbal and sexual violence all manifest themselves as these survivors lose touch with their humanity. They are not a particularly nice bunch of people to begin with, so this does pose some problems for us as an audience empathizing with any of them. Nevertheless, the film does generate quite a bit of suspense and there are some very unpleasant moments of nastiness. So it does work in a brutal in-your-face kind of way. And this is the movie's chief selling point.
While the setting is almost exclusively limited to the bunker, there is one unusual moment where one of the survivors is able to exit the confines of the building and come briefly into contact with the enemy. It's a very bizarre sequence where the mysterious bad guys appear to be storing children – one of which they earlier snatched from the bunker - in incubators. The children look either dead or blinded. It's horrific and utterly strange. Immediately after this the mysterious enemy weld our heroes back into their bunker and are never seen again. After this point the microcosm of the bunker just goes from bad to worse, as some inhabitants go mad and others sadistically insane.
Acting is OK. Michael Biehn overacts big time and fairly chews up the scenery throughout. Rosanna Arquette has an extremely unpleasant role. The other actors vary from being unpleasant psychopaths to negligible people. But the pacing is good and the limited setting doesn't affect things too much as the film keeps ramping the tension up. Overall, The Divide is a nasty movie with a very pessimistic view of how life in these extreme conditions will play out. If you like apocalyptic films on the more grimy and violent side of the spectrum then this is one to see.