By: debbie lynn elias
Well, it didn’t take long for my Worst Films of 2012 list to get started thanks to director Xavier Gens and THE DIVIDE. In what is described by the filmmakers as a “graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller”, nine strangers, whose only prior commonality was being a resident in the same apartment building, are trapped underground in the apartment building’s bunker-like basement following a nuclear attack. Sounds like it has potential, right? I thought so and was anxious to see it. But after trying to erase the film’s memory from my eyeballs, my one lament is that the film itself wasn’t destroyed by a nuclear attack.
With life moving ahead with the hustle and bustle of any other day, it comes as a shock when explosions start pummeling the city, rocking the very foundation from under it. Panic strikes and the residents of one apartment building in particular, hustle downward toward the street with some eight residents hurriedly being shuttled into the basement of the apartment building by its owner-manager, Mickey.
Once inside, panic is replaced by shock as Mickey slams the huge metal door shut, spinning its cylindrical lock as if a water tight lock in a submarine. Frantically, he runs strips of duct tape around the edging of the doorway “to keep out the radiation dust” while bombings continue raining down above ground. Slowly, these lost souls shoved to safety start to awaken from their daze as their eyes adjust to the jaundice colored pallor of their prison. And as their minds clear and begin to process what has happened, anger, rage and hysteria kick in.
Marilyn and her daughter Wendi, roused from a late morning slumber, are both in tears, bewildered, frightened. Eva appears calm and stoic while her French attorney husband leans towards the whiney. Delvin, a proud African American man is very methodical, trying to assess the situation calmly and call for help on a portable CB type radio while Josh and his best friend Bobby are nothing but defiant hothead smart alecks. And Josh’s younger brother Adrien, a soft-spoken young man with an obvious crush on Eva, appears lost and confused. Then there’s Mickey, well Mickey makes himself the self-appointed leader “because this is my basement.” Rigged with generators to supply electricity, Mickey has obviously been preparing for this day. The makeshift bunker is outfitted with rudimentary toilet facilities, a shower, canned goods, water, first aid supplies and a secretive room that is off limits to all but Mickey. And of course, while everyone starts questioning what has happened, Mickey, in his very best political uncorrectness, goes from blaming one ethnicity to the next for what is happening atop.
But as hours turn into days, it starts to become clear that there will be no rescue; that Mickey may, in fact, be correct, and radiation and death is all that awaits them above ground; that is until the bunker lock is breached from the other side and white suited men armed with massive weaponry storm the bunker, taking Wendi captive, injuring Adrien and Marilyn and causing more terror than our crew already felt. But as luck would have it, once our captives realize this is not a rescue mission, they do manage to kill three of the white suits. (Of course no one thought about what you then do with dead bodies in a closed air room.) With Wendi gone, Marilyn starts to descend into madness while Mickey, Delvin, Josh and Eva plot to go topside to hopefully find Wendi, but more importantly find a way out.
With Josh the designated volunteer for the mission, what he finds on the outside is as equally, if not more, horrific as what Fate now holds for our nine survivors. With supplies running out and madness slowly taking hold of them all, all hope of “humanity” appears lost as the primal instincts of survival clouded with desperation and panic take hold.
As Mickey and Delvin, respectively, Michael Biehn and Courtney B. Vance are the real veterans of this group. Joining them is Rosanna Arquette as Marilyn and Lauren German as Eva. Milo Ventimiglia and Michael Eklund step in as Josh and Bobby (and heaven only knows why given the storyline of these two characters) while Ivan Gonzalez and Ashton Holmes round out the group as Sam and Adrien with Abbey Thickson as Wendi.
Ivan Gonzalez’ Sam is shear annoyance with his wimpering simpering whininess as is Ashton Holmes’ puppy love for Lauren German’s Eva. Rosanna Arquette is just a train wreck with no visible viable talent as an actress. Sadly, we lose Courtney B. Vance early on as his character of Delvin was at least likeable. On the whole, however, these characters are all so unlikeable that you don’t care that they are trapped. You don’t care if they die. In fact, you want them to die – fast. This is where the story completely fails – you need to be able to root for someone. Here, Xavier Gens and company have made them so disgusting that you don’t care. I was rooting for the men in white to just blow them all away.
As for the story itself, I love the premise and was excited about the premise, but writers Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean together with director Xavier Gens go so extreme for depravity and grotesqueness (Do we really need to see a woman with her period wiping away the blood with her hands while making out with a guy?) that the film loses focus, missing golden opportunities for expanding the story with an actual story. There have been so many studies (as well as documented instances) on captivity and dire emergent circumstances and what happens to people in those situations – returning to primordial ooze and a very carnivorous feral, survival of the fittest nature – that it isn’t surprising to see the mindless depravity that results here on screen. First, we lose the child; child = innocence. No surprise. And then we lose the African-American, the one voice of reason. No surprise. But then we have the requisite blonde bimbette go over the edge with her daughter gone and then everything becomes sexually depraved. Huh? One would think food, water, etc. are higher on the list than nightgowns, make up and sado-masochistic sex and rape, but not with THE DIVIDE.
We are taunted with a snippet of the outside world and military experimentation…or is it experimentation…when Ventimiglia’s character Josh heads out of the cellar allegedly to find little Wendi, yet we are only left with more unanswered questions. If survival is so keen, why run back to the cellar, why not keep pushing along or the others rush out to join? Does fear trump survival instincts? Another question with no answers. Was the nuke detonated for the purpose of experimentation or were factions/countries warring? We are never told and the only character that ever offers any hypothesis for what’s happening above is Michael Biehn’s Mickey…and that hypothesis keeps changing until he’s duct-taped to the wheelchair and gagged.
There are no words for the plot line of Josh and Bobby and the performances of Ventimiglia and Eklund beyond “ridiculum” and “disgusting.” And as we look to film continuity, one must ask why are they getting rapid bald spots and not Biehn’s Mickey or Gonzalez’ Sam or German’s Eva? Further the make-up on those two looks more like that of starving children in Africa and again, fails due to lack of continuity by it not being applied to each of the other survivors but for eventually some lip cracking on Eva. The lack of continuity within the story and the physical appearance of the characters is horrifically noticeable. I do, however, like Lauren German’s quiet, studious, boiling pot approach to Eva. It works.
But there is a bright spot in THE DIVIDE (besides the fact that it does end). The explosions and effects at the beginning of the movie that set the captivity in motion are exceedingly well done. The repetitive, surprising sounds effects of above ground explosions that just “pop up” thereafter are fantastic – well done from a sound standpoint in terms of quality and believability, but extremely effective with the timing and placement within the scenes. So applause to Brock Capell the sound engineer, and his team.
Laurent Bares cinematography is believable with the jaundiced pallor of the basement and only an occasional pop of color from a lighted Santa lawn figure or the glow of a candle (which is still yellowed in its pallor but provides a flash of light). The vibrant bright white on white contrast with the above ground military tunnel is stunning, as is the lensing of Josh going through it. Best lensing in the whole film both literally and figuratively, and obviously metaphoric for death and “going into the light.”
I hate to say it, but the visual effects are in keeping with the overall bad quality of this film starting with the “man on fire” and even the cutting off of Mickey’s finger. Close-ups on heinous brutality of trying to slit a fingernail from a finger or cutting off a finger show the poor quality of workmanship. For example, the fingernail appears to be a papered press on and the knife against the skin looks like a blend between cardboard and rubber. With the “man on fire” sequence, you see a white t-shirt on the body where it was clearly shirtless two seconds earlier. Inexcusable technical production mistakes. And should I even start to talk about the implausibility of feces laden sewage which surely would be non-existent following an extended period of radiation and complete destruction of civilization. And what about those oxygen tanks affixed to the men in white suits? How long will that last?
So many holes. So many problems. I have to believe that the financiers of THE DIVIDE were themselves trapped inside a bunker and tortured to pony up money to make this. Now I normally like depraved insanity and violence in a film, and in fact, when done well, welcome it, but THE DIVIDE is just sooooo over the top that it’s not even laughable and only fit to become a midnight cult classic for those completely drunk, stoned, or trapped in a bunker-life basement themselves.
The one valuable lesson gleaned from THE DIVIDE? We learn a multitude of new uses for duct tape! However, one of them should be to seal the film canisters of THE DIVIDE shut to save you from seeing it.
Mickey – Michael Biehn
Eva – Lauren German
Josh – Milo Ventimiglia
Delvin – Courtney B. Vance
Marilyn – Rosanna Arquette
Bobby – Michael Eklund
Sam – Ivan Gonzalez
Adrien – Ashton Holmes
Wendi – Abbey Thickson
Directed by Xavier Gens. Written by Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean.
