Tags:
Film: The Divide
Year: 2011
Director: Xavier Gens
Writer: Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean
Starring: Lauren German, Michael Biehn and Milo Ventimiglia
Review:
This film begins as the nuclear missiles are dropping. We are inside of an apartment building. Everyone tries to rush out the doors, but there are too many of them and it gets blocked. A bunch of survivors end up noticing that the super to the building is going through a door and they rush it. The super is played by Michael Biehn and he tries to prevent them from getting in, but there are too many of them.
He allows those that saw it to come in. There are a few different groups of people here. You have a woman who is played by Lauren German. She has a foreign fiancé who is played by Iván González, he is also a lawyer. There is a group of three guys, two of which are step-brothers, they are played by Milo Ventimiglia and Ashton Holmes. The third guy is Ventimiglia’s friend played by Michael Eklund. There is another guy played by Courtney B. Vance. Finally a mother, played by Rosanna Arquette, and her daughter played by Abbey Thickson.
Biehn is a survivalist and he had set-up this shelter for himself, but it is large enough to accommodate all of them. Biehn isn’t very nice though. Vance tries a radio that is down there and soon after they are attacked by men in clean suits. Holmes is shot, Thickson is taken, but they do kill two of them. Ventimiglia puts one of the suits on and checks to see what is going on outside their door and find out, it is set up into clean hallways and labs. He kills a couple more and the men outside weld the door shut, sealing them in.
From here we see what happens to human nature when they are sealed in. Eklund loses his mind first from having to chop up the bodies of the dead men to dispose of them and Arquette follows right behind after losing her daughter. We see them faction off and we see that Biehn has a secret himself. Will they survive?
First off, this film is really weird. Now with that being said, I did like it. The acting is good and the story, even though it is pretty basic is actually really good for what they are trying to do. This film really is looking at the deterioration of humans and society, which I really liked about this one.
I would recommend giving this one a viewing. This film is odd and gets weirder the longer they are down there, but it makes you think of what happens if you’re trapped in a room where you can’t escape. Who are you really and what lengths will you go to fit in? It shows what those in power do when unchecked.
My Rating: 6 out of 10