THE DIVIDE

This is such an easy film to hate.  It is disgusting, mean spirited and nihilistic.  It is also the new film from French director Xavier Gens, who first hit the scene with his amazing horror film “Frontiere(s)”, before helming the action fest “Hitman”.  “The Divide” is more of a return to the style of his first film with it being dark and dirty, brutal and violent.

 “The Divide” is another one of those post-apocalyptic films, although with a slight difference.  This film cares little of the disaster that has destroyed the world, and rather focuses on a number of survivors living together in an underground shelter, and the effects such an event has on humanity itself.  The brief moments we do observe of the outside world are in the very intense opening sequence when one of our characters, Eva, is looking from the window at the nuclear bombs about to hit New York and change the world forever.  This scene obviously echoes the September 11 tragedy, as our characters all bolt down a staircase (as the building is coming down around them) into an already prepared shelter, which is stocked with food and water.  This door is then locked and sealed so none of the radiation dust can enter the compound.  Right from the beginning of the film, it is clear that “The Divide” is going to be an intense film.  The owner of the shelter is Mickey, who was the super of the building that has just been destroyed, and as this is his place, he basically appoints himself the leader of the group and sets all of the ground rules.  In the shelter as well are Eva and her boyfriend Sam, brothers Josh and Adrien, single mum Marilyn and her young daughter Wendi, Bobby who is Josh’s best friend, Delvin and Liz.  In a normal situation, none of these people would socialize together, but they all have a common goal here which is to survive. 

Mickey, the alpha-male of the group, lays down the law that no-one can touch the door and if anyone tries they will meet their own death.  The terrified group does not know what to do, so they agree with Mickey’s demands but after sitting around waiting and doing nothing, Josh decides he would rather chance what is outside.  As soon as he touches the door, Mickey violently swings an axe at him with his only intention to kill the man.  Luckily, Josh dodges the blow, but it becomes apparent that this directive is very serious.  For the next couple of days, boredom sets in, as the reality of their new life becomes sadly apparent.  The group does not gel together but rather separates into smallish groups with each group worried about their own survival.  After an unknown amount of time has passed, they hear noises outside their shut door and soon realize that help is on the way.  However, it is not what they think, rather the men outside have come for one thing and that is little Wendi (which is hinted at that she will be used to repopulate the world).  The group fight for the little girl, killing one of the intruders, but their number (not to mention weapons) are too much and they take poor Wendi, but not before killing one of the survivors, Liz.  Not only that, but they then weld shut the door.  Suddenly a bleak situation looks much bleaker, but surely it couldn’t get much worse.  This statement couldn’t be more wrong as it is from this moment on, the actions of our characters go from bad to extreme worst, and once the balance of power switches from Mickey to Josh, the disintegration of what makes us human begins in earnest.

I will say it again, this is such an easy film to hate, and I am sure many will, but for me this was a film of two distinct halves.  The first half of the film I really did not enjoy at all. I felt that it was awfully repetitive and I don’t just mean the constant whining from the cast, but even directorially, it seemed that all Gens did with the camera was push it in if he wanted to isolate one character, or pull it out if he wanted the whole group to be the focus.  It just seemed a little boring, which I suppose in retrospect could have been deliberate, as this is exactly how the group is feeling as there is nothing to do, day in day out, but to survive or exist.  With the exception of Eva and Delvin, none of the characters are very pleasant to be around either.  They are all out for themselves, never once considering the others in the group.  This isn’t entirely true, as they all make a concerted effort to save Wendi, but when this fails, and the last little bit of innocence amongst them has gone, self preservation kicks in.  Also for the majority of the first half, Mickey is the character we follow most, and quite frankly I was not a fan of Michael Biehn’s performance at all.  It seemed far too aggressive and I also thought he was over the top most of the time that is until the second half, when his bravura is gone and he becomes more human towards the end of the film.  

Actually in regards to performances, they are all over the place in “The Divide”.  With the exception of a couple, no one really gives a great consistent performance, although most of them do have moments when they shine.  I think the worst bit of casting though was Ivan Gonzalez as Sam, as it is obvious that the Spaniard is struggling with the English language and as such his performance suffered terribly.  Never once did he make Sam feel like a real character and the believability that he was Eva’s boyfriend was never there either as it just felt like the two of them were strangers.  However the performances I want to highlight are Lauren German as Eva, who is the only beacon of hope in the film (even though her character too does some terrible things), Michael Eklund as Bobby, who basically steals the whole film, and Rosanna Arquette who plays the very sad role of Marilyn.  She doesn’t have a lot of dialogue but expresses so much pain through her eyes you can actually see her just give up once her daughter is taken from her.  She is the most tragic character in my eyes because she suffers so much abuse at the hands of the others, from mental, physical and even sexual abuse, and sadly she just doesn’t care, she no longer wants to live now that her daughter has been taken from her, and it is like she has a mental breakdown leaving just the shell of her body to be abused.

Once the second half of the film kicks in, the intensity of their situation is ratcheted up, and the characters actions start to become deplorable, the film is amazing and much more interesting.  As each of the characters begin to break down into their own insanities, the darker and bleaker the film becomes.  Seriously, by this stage of the film, the intensity is at such an amazing level and never once slows down to let the audience breathe, if anything it continues to get worse until the end of the film.  While it is the loss of Wendi that starts the downfall, it isn’t until Bobby has to cut up a body that things begin to spiral out of control.  It becomes too much for him to deal with, and he snaps, with the rest of the characters following soon after due to the fact that they are all suffering from cabin fever and that they know they have no chance of survival.  All of them are starting to lose their hair, they have all lost incredible amounts of weight, and it is obvious that radiation has got into their compound.  If they are going to die, why exist by society’s rules, why don’t they do what they want and take whatever they want.  Sadly, this is what happens to Josh and Bobby who basically terrorize the rest of the group and take control of all of the supplies.  It is only Eva who fights against the reverse evolution like her “friends”, by rejecting her basic human instincts to survive, while still trying to consider others.

It is in this second half of the film that “The Divide” is really similar to Xavier Gens’ first film “Frontiere(s)”, as that film too had a nihilistic edge to it and a bleakness that was hard to shake.  Gens is the first director, I think, that has been able to do consistently what Tobe Hooper was a master of when he was in his prime.  In my opinion Hooper was a master of intensity, to the point that in his early films, you often saw his characters at extreme breaking points, and often involved a lot of shouting and the like.  This can be hard to get right, and make it believable, because it could just come across as people just shouting, but Hooper was always able to bring the insanity of it all into focus and make it deeply disturbing for the audience (great examples are in “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and his follow-up, “Eaten Alive”), to the point that it is almost too much for us to witness.  Gens has done exactly the same in both “Frontiere(s)” and “The Divide” and the final half an hour of the latter film is insanity of the highest order, it just does not let up, and I loved every minute of it.  Compared to the first half, I could not believe where this film had ended up.  Visually, the look of the film is very reminiscent to “Frontiere(s)” too, with Gens’ regular cinematographer, Laurent Bares, handling the duties again.  The location of the film automatically means that this is going to be a dirty and dark film, and Bares stays true to this, with a lot of scenes filled with dark ominous shadows.  The colour palette is also very grim, full of browns, blacks, dirty whites, in fact colour is almost absent throughout the whole film.

Overall, while I am sure this film will be loathed by some, despite the opening the first half, I ended up loving “The Divide”.  It headed into a dark and insane place by the end, and became a dark and bloody film, but this was all for the better of the film.  It has been a long while since I can remember watching a film almost breathless out of terror, like I did during “The Divide” in its extended finale.  If like me you think the start of the film is slow going, just give it a chance, because you will not want to miss the insanity of the second half. 

4 Stars.