In the aftermath of a nuclear attack on New York, the residents of an apartment building take refuge in the basement, unable to venture out due to the toxic maelstrom the city air has become. As food and supplies begin to slowly dwindle, the patience and tempers of the residents starts to fray, as does their sanity.
While post-apocalyptic tales of humanity’s struggle to survive are nothing new, rarely has a film emerged with so claustrophobic a scope. Instead of disheartening treks through the desolate wilderness in search of somewhere safe to eke out an existence, the survivors spend the entire film trapped in the building’s basement. Surprisingly, it’s precisely the mundanity of this set up that proves to be The Divide’s strength.
A film’s characters being physically unable to get away from one another limits the scope of action, but at the same time also increases the required level of interaction between them. With each character displaying varying levels of reason (or lack thereof) right from the beginning, there is no shortage of friction to keep things interesting.
A refreshing variation on these kinds of films is that the reason for the initial attack and the perpetrators both remain irrelevant to the story. While there is some discussion as to who might have been responsible, the issue is swiftly abandoned as irrelevant when personality conflicts begin to escalate, although there’s not much in the way of justification given for why everyone goes all Lord of the Flies on each other, apart from the implication that the claustrophobic atmosphere drives people over the edge.
It’s a worrying but all-too-likely state of affairs that any women in a group of survivors will sooner or later be seen as little more than potential sex objects, and here is no exception. With the male to female ratio starting out at 3:1, such a development is inevitable, and is almost as unpleasant as the gruesome scenes of torture it’s juxtaposed by.
A problem with the film’s development is the unclear designation of how much time goes by between scenes. While we are to understand via the shots of supply stacks and waistlines both inexorably shrinking that some length of time is passing, the indistinct length of it makes the developments difficult to properly reconcile.
Aside from the gradual descent in to madness and anarchy, the greatest stand-out moment of eeriness comes soon after the initial attack when the blast door of the basement is opened with a blowtorch and a bullet-spraying assault by men in hazmat suits commences. Sadly, subsequent action sequences fail to live up to the expectation this generates.
Overall Verdict: A promising start is let down by indistinct character development and unanswered questions. More development of the ideas presented could have elevated The Divide beyond the merely average.
Special Features:
Behind the Scenes
Trailer
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall