Divide, The

Released by: Anchor Bay Entertainment
Released on: April 17, 2012.
Director: Xavier Gens
Cast: Lauren German, Michael Biehn
Year: 2011
Purchase From Amazon

The Movie:

Here's a novel concept: Take a bunch of stereotypes, lock in a basement after a nuclear event and then pretend to be surprised by the results. Add to that the worst central character since Jamie Bell in Deathwatch and you have 2011's The Divide, a title as muddled as the themes it tries to explore.

Exploding warheads start the film and the panicked few characters run downstairs to a very secure basement of a NYC apartment building to start the film. The super, Mickey (Michael Biehn), is also conveniently a survivalist nut who has a store of some supplies, power and space. No one likes the setup where cigar-chomping, glowering Mickey is in charge but he seems to at least know what's going on. So the main players are: Central character Eva (Lauren German) and her bookish boyfriend Sam (Ivan Gonzalez) just act shell-shocked, hothead friends Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and Bobby (Michael Eklund), Josh's quiet, sensitive brother Adrien (Ashton Holmes), security guard Devlin (Courtney Vance, the only minority found in this apartment building in NYC, apparently), and a very-weathered mom, Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette) and her young daughter.

They soon settle into this life, all hanging onto the hope that the pesky radiation outside will soon dissipate and the rescue crews will come for them. However, they're soon set upon by a team of radiation suit-wearing, gun-toting soldiers who cut through the door to get in and, once there, grab Marilyn's daughter and haul her off. The survivors manage to take out a couple of these soldiers, though, so they're able to use one of the radiation suits to head back outside and see what's going on. This duty falls to Josh who quickly finds, once he ventures out, a strange collection of specimens and several kids oddly preserved in some kind of experiment lab. But he's found out by other soldiers before he can do anything and he flees back to the basement. The soldiers then seal their door and, thus, seemingly their fate.

The rest of the film chronicles the deterioration of just about every character as they try to survive on limited supplies and have to start disposing of bodies with a dull axe. The power dynamic shifts and, while it tries to do so subtly, the characters are just so stereotypical it leaves nothing to the storytelling. This doesn't really make any character sympathetic, either, as they begin to chew on each other -- that is, except for Eva who just stares after everyone else stupidly and witnesses all the other activities while doing nothing to prevent anyone from going from bad to worse. And yet she's the character through whom we're supposed to view the events and sympathize with. But her complete lack of positive action, combined with when she does do something it's to further push someone down their path of self-destruction, doesn't make her sympathetic in the slightest. In fact, if anything, she's responsible for much of the resulting damage that occurs in the film. And the fact that she leaves to characters to burn to death whom she could've easily saved just so we can have a closing shot that matches the opening shot of the film is unforgivable and leaves one yelling full volume in anger at the stupidity of such a choice of endings.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The BD from Anchor Bay is presented in 1080p well enough and the 2.35:1 widescreen really allows the film to convey the griminess of the survivors' basement and to view their physical deterioration quite well. Soundtrack duties fall to a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 in English and it's very well-implemented here. However, the only other audio language option is Spanish and that's only presented, oddly enough, in mono. English SDH, Spanish and French subtitles are also available.

The disc includes a commentary track featuring director Xavier Gens along with actors Michael Biehn, Michael Eklund and Milo Ventimiglia. The actors don't really offer up much at all since Gens just seems to keep talking non-stop in his heavily-accented English that's just about impossible to understand. So this feature is pretty useless here, given that fact. The only other extra included is the film's trailer which makes it look far better than it actually is.

Summary:

Using a buffet approach to post-apocalyptic survival - wherein they choose which elements of radiation poisoning and such they want to use and ignore the rest - The Divide is a moody, well-shot mess of a film with few to little surprises beyond the ending that rescues the worst character in the story. Confused by the thematic aspirations it seeks to convey few are left looking very good out of this one except, perhaps, Biehn and Eklund who get to have a blast with their roles. However, it's been awhile since we've had a post-apocalyptic, non-zombie film in a while so...there's that.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!