The Divide Review

I have an interest in nuclear war. Well, I have an interest in stories about nuclear war, to be more precise. I’m a big fan of films such as When the Wind Blows and television such asThreads. One of the books I’m currently reading is a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. So when I read the synopsis of The Divide, I was immediately interested. In the film, nuclear warheads are dropped on New York City and a handful of people manage to take shelter in the basement of a tower block, a sanctuary that becomes a prison and then a madhouse, as Very Bad Things unfold.

The nuclear war aspect is really just a hook on which to hang the real focus of interest of the film: the effects of enforced proximity and the destruction of social norms on a group of strangers, with a particular focus on gender roles. Does that sound a little dry? Fret not; it’s also a deeply disturbing psychological horror, with some genuinely strange and visually arresting moments as the film goes on. The initial nuclearly-bombed setup is quickly and cheekily relegated to MacGuffin status (the identity of the perpetrators of the nuclear strike is left deliberately ambiguous; the Arabs? The North Koreans? The Americans?) until the end of the film, which leaves the viewer with some genuinely haunting images.

The main crux of the film is the degeneration of the characters without society or an authority to keep them in check and looks specifically at how (some of) the male characters begin to treat the women (in short, abominably). We view the film through the eyes of Eva (Lauren German), who quickly comes to realise that her partner Sam (Iván González) is not going to be a top dog of a Lord of the Flies. The main power struggle is between misanthropic, weirdo building superintendent Mickey (Michael Biehn, who is excellent) and Josh, a genuinely terrifying Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes).

Some may find the film overly bleak and even mean-spirited. Personally, I would say ‘uncompromising’ and ‘challenging’ are more suitable adjectives with which to describe The Divide. In any case, a film that begins with the total destruction of one of the biggest cities on earth is unlikely to have a happy-clappy payoff. I enjoyed that it wasn’t afraid to be complex with its ideas and its characters. Director Xavier Gens, best known for the less than well-remembered Hitman adaptation, has artfully constructed The Divide. It is likely to satisfy horror fans (though its stock in trade is less soundtrack-punctuated scares, more the gradual realisation that somewhere along the line, something has gone deeply, irrecoverably and hideously wrong), sci-fi fans and any errant sociologists that care to view the film. A pessimistic view of humanity? Yes (personally I’d like to believe that the basic humanity of people would remain in situations such as this). One of the more interesting and engaging horror films of recent years? Most definitely.