The Divide (2012)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Manu G

  
  To survive the end of the world you must first survive each other. Great Film! The performances felt real. The mood was perfectly dark and doomish. This post-apocalyptic take on humanity is not the most positive, but it is positively one of the bests! The cinematography and few… More
  To survive the end of the world you must first survive each other. Great Film! The performances felt real. The mood was perfectly dark and doomish. This post-apocalyptic take on humanity is not the most positive, but it is positively one of the bests! The cinematography and few special effects are good, especially for the budget. The story with its sci-fi elements briefly introduces a world of wonder, before shutting the door closed on hope and humanity. It is saved by sparkles of effective comedy, but transgresses into a struggle to survive at any price. What is there left? Humanity? Dignity? Love? Compassion? Not really. As dark is it it, this vision hopefully encourages us to do better in our own lives. No need to wait for a nuclear explosion to figure out what is our desired behaviour for betterment. Totally worth watching!!! 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.

• Lorenzo v

  
  <i>"To survive the end of the world you must first survive each other."</i> Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.… More
  <i>"To survive the end of the world you must first survive each other."</i> Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic. <center><font size=+2 face="Century Schoolbook"><b><u>REVIEW</u></b></font></center> 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. 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.

• MisterYoda ?

  
  two stars

• E.J. B

  
  Clocking in at over two hours, The Divide is a vicious horror film. It's premise is simple enough. Nine tenants of a New York apartment complex narrowly escape a deadly nuclear blast by finding their way into a bomb shelter built by their paranoid, ex-Marine superintendant.… More
  Clocking in at over two hours, The Divide is a vicious horror film. It's premise is simple enough. Nine tenants of a New York apartment complex narrowly escape a deadly nuclear blast by finding their way into a bomb shelter built by their paranoid, ex-Marine superintendant. Whatever caused the total decimation of New York City is never explained, but the focus of the film isn't on the outside; it's on how the nine characters deal with living in an enclosed space with food quickly running out and madness slowly seeping in. As is typical with films like this, The Divide runs with the cliche idea that without rules and civilized order, people will eventually start killing each other for personal gain, the strong or most fearful will prevail and the weak will perish. Every character is as diverse as the next one, so there are plenty of different types of characters to identify with, most notably the heroine Eve (yes the Biblical reference is obvious), played by Lauren German. Not once does this girl make an immoral or selfish decision. And everyone else has a mix of good and evil attributes that will soon enough spark an all out war between them, leaving Eve with the realization that at least outside, she has a chance at surviving. Yes, you've seen this movie before. Lord of the Flies covered this ground quite well, as did The Beach and almost every zombie movie you've seen. But The Divide isn't as bad as you might think. I for one was never bored. I didn't predict where the story would go in terms of who would turn on who, or just how atrocious some of these people become. It's true that in times of crisis, you never know how people will react over time, and I was able to buy most of the plot twists and character developments. I also really liked Michael Biehn in this movie. His portrayal of Mickey is pretty much Cpl Hicks if he returned to Earth, couldn't adjust to ordinary mundane life, and became a paranoid, creepy old man. So The Divide is pretty familiar territory, but at least it gets the formula right. There's enough here to scare, disturb, and entertain.

• Eric H

  
  Following a nuclear attack on New York, a group of survivors hole up in the basement of their apartment block. Tensions run high and eventually they give in to the most primal instincts of humanity. Over the last few years, French cinema has become synonymous with a new brand of… More
  Following a nuclear attack on New York, a group of survivors hole up in the basement of their apartment block. Tensions run high and eventually they give in to the most primal instincts of humanity. Over the last few years, French cinema has become synonymous with a new brand of extreme nihilism. I'm fine with this if there's a point to it all but the recent Gallic output has just been nastiness for the sake of it. To say I'm not a fan is an understatement, only "Martyrs" had anything worthwhile to say but despite having one of the best endings you'll ever see, the preceding ninety minutes were painful to get through. Against all odds, Gens has taken this new French extremism across the Atlantic. The result is one of the bleakest movies ever made in the United States, and certainly one of the most anti-American. If the French hate the U.S as much as Americans think, they'll be cheering in cinemas from Paris to Marseille as Gens delivers underhanded punches to the fabric of American society. The biggest name here is Biehn, barely aged a day in the thirty years since "Terminator". In a piece of writing purely designed to infuriate middle America, he's a former New York firefighter who, it's implied, may have lost his wife on September 11th. He's also a racist homophobe who hides food and water from the other survivors. His secret stash is kept in a panic room whose door is concealed by a giant American flag. Could you get a more blunt metaphor? The characters degradation, both physical and moral, isn't even gradual. At roughly the halfway point, they suddenly take on an emaciated look, all except German, who obviously has a contract insisting she remain glamorous throughout. Arquette bizarrely turns into a slut and Eklund becomes a grotesque clone of Klaus Kinski's Nosferatu. Trying to make up for Gens lack of creativity are two of his countrymen, cinematographer Laurent Bares and composer Jean-Pierre Taieb. Their work is stellar and far too good for this film. The widescreen photography is very reminiscent of John Carpenter, a hero to many French film-makers, and to this writer. Call me naive but I don't buy this idea that in times of horror humans resort to savagery, we didn't make it this far on our planet by not working together. For better or worse we're essentially pack animals. Despite Gens opinion, if I had to be stuck in this scenario I'd much rather face it with Americans than Europeans.

• Christopher H

  
  The Divide transcends its small location feel, but is debilitated by a wild, unkempt style with extremely little explanation or motivation from any of its characters or their actions. Despite the film being completely grotesque and violent at times, the situation is entertaining… More
  The Divide transcends its small location feel, but is debilitated by a wild, unkempt style with extremely little explanation or motivation from any of its characters or their actions. Despite the film being completely grotesque and violent at times, the situation is entertaining enough to grab attention without ever emoting melodrama or recycled ideas.

• August S

  
  Every thing's going well until they fed me up with --maybe--one of the most frustrating ending I've seen. The premise was intriguing, but the script was uneven and half-cooked, the drama doesn't make that much impact and there's no iconic scene whatsoever but I was… More
  Every thing's going well until they fed me up with --maybe--one of the most frustrating ending I've seen. The premise was intriguing, but the script was uneven and half-cooked, the drama doesn't make that much impact and there's no iconic scene whatsoever but I was willing to set the flaws aside for a good conclusion but I've been greatly disappointed.

• Francisco G

  
  A movie all over the place much like the infamous Frontier(s) from Xavier Gens. Toned a bit down on the extreme and brutal violence of the french flick, it tries to find it's violence elsewhere. Since this is a post-apocalyptic thriller, you guessed! On how inhumane we can get.… More
  A movie all over the place much like the infamous Frontier(s) from Xavier Gens. Toned a bit down on the extreme and brutal violence of the french flick, it tries to find it's violence elsewhere. Since this is a post-apocalyptic thriller, you guessed! On how inhumane we can get. It could've been a fine addition to the saturated genre but it just doesn't know what to do most of the times. Pretty much like the surprising sci-fi twist that happens 30mins in to just not be mentioned ever again. Why have you brought it up then? The rest is just a bunch of not very well organized conflicts among the survivors. Some decent, some ridiculous, some fantastic, some completly nonsense (specially in the beginning)... There's some actually really good acting around, specially from the evil-doers and a psyched Michael Bihen (would you have him any other way?) but the script is so poor, you can't help but to notice on their faces how hard they're trying. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's awful. A missed opportunity.

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