Title: The Divide

Directed by: Xavier Gens

Starring: Lauren German, Michael Biehn, Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Eklund, Ashton Holmes, Rosanna Arquette, Courtney B. Vance and Iván González

Well, this is January. The month of January is historically known in the movie world as a dumping ground for new releases. Studios and distributors take their movies that have been sitting on the shelf for years or movies quality that is at the very least questionable and release them at the beginning of the year so audiences can quickly forget about them. But strangely, January 2012 is a bit different, movies like “The Grey” and “Haywire” have that high quality you might find in, let’s say, September. A good rule of thumb is the later in the year a movie is released, the better it might be. “The Divide” is an anomaly in my opinion. The new film from Xavier Gens is chocked full of ideas of humanity, the end of the world, terrorism and patriotism, but what falls short is that the director doesn’t make these ideas interesting at all.

“The Divide” starts off with a bang! Literately, a nuclear bomb has gone off in New York City and the tenants of a Manhattan apartment building race down flights of stairs in a mass of confusion looking for refuge. As the audience, we are thrown into the action with no context, or rhyme or reason. This was a daring way to start a film but at the same time it makes it extremely engaging and not alienating. A small group of strangers find themselves sealed off in a basement bunker, where they are left to wonder what is going on and how can they survive this. But problems arise with the character dynamic and the narrative right away.

In-fighting for leadership and overall survival becomes the end goal but what is so problematic is that it happens way too soon. We know nothing about these people and they’re already fighting with each other. Gens makes the point to show how humans devolve into animalistic tendencies so fast that we don’t get the weight of the conflicts themselves and therefore it feels false and heavy handed. An example of this is a scene involving the survivors finding a cache of food when they believed there was no more food left. They quickly devour the food as if they were animals but, the voice of reason throughout the whole film, Eva (Lauren German) eats her food with a fork as if she didn’t want to give up her humanity. C’mon! The film is full of moments like this.

As the story unfolds, we find this group in a strange position as the sci-fi elements of the film perk up as a group of well-armed men dressed in protective suits find their way inside of the bunker. It is not clear who they are or what they are up to, but we soon see that they are not here to help. As the group investigates the identity of these men, they quickly give up and never really come back to this plot element. Why? This seemed like a good place to go.

A lot of “The Divide” feels exactly as the title would suggest, as a divided amalgam of plot elements and character moments that never come together and that are quickly undercut as ridiculous by the over-the-top performances. It takes itself far too seriously to be a self-aware romp and the bigness of the acting is too funny to take seriously. The pacing of the film is far too slow to be exciting as I found myself uninterested in these people, which is a shame. I feel there’s a good movie here somewhere. But I take issue with director Xavier Gens’ choice of wanting to be shocking instead of interesting. The elements are all there for success but it feels too disjointed and unintentionally comical to be considered as a quality movie. With “The Divide” it sure feels like January to me.

Technical: C+

Overall: D+

by @Rudie_Obias