Is That a Sausage In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Hoarding Food In the Bomb Shelter?

Time and time again I say: I love films set around the apocalypse. 

Set them on the last day of the world 

Set them as the world is slowly dying from a flesh-devouring plague

Set them as it tries to recover 

Set them just on the cusp of maybe/maybe not world destroying disaster 

Set them during a time when Tiger from The Brady Bunch helps Don Johnson get laid

Point is, if you ring the bell for the end of the world, I will skip to faster than Pavlov’s puppy being weaned on Red Bull. Hence, The Divide!

Quick Plot: As nuclear war wages on the streets of Manhattan, a gaggle of apartment dwellers follows grizzly super Mickey (Terminator’s Michael Biehn) down into his well-fortified bomb shelter. Among those who make it before John Connor’s dad seals the door:

Eva (Hostel 2’s Lauren German), quietly smart and strong

Sam, her twerpy French lawyer boyfriend

Adrian, a thoughtful 20something

Josh, his alpha half-brother

Bobby, their slightly punkish pal

Delvin (Courtney B. Vance), a paranoid (or IS HE?) middle ager

And Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette!) and her 10ish year old daughter

Funny. About a half hour into The Divide, I worried, as in the case in these types of ensemble films, that I had and would continue to have no real differentiation between the younger male characters. Yes, ‘Sam’ had an accent, but he also looked quite a bit like ‘Josh.' Meanwhile, I still had no real idea how ‘Bobby’ fit into any of it: was he Josh’s boyfriend? A drug dealer? A good guy or villain? A redhead who shares Matthew McConoughy's allergy to wearing shirts?

One of the many pleasant surprises about The Divide was that eventually, I knew exactly who Bobby was, even if I, well, still didn’t. He wasn’t The Hothead or The Jerk or The Horny Guy. He was Bobby. 

(See what I mean about the shirt thing?)

He was all of these things. He was hotheaded, pretty jerky, and eventually, incredibly horny. Because that’s what people are like. They aren’t easily defined with one character trait, no matter how easy it generally is for screenwriters to create their cast as such. Hence, despite the characters of The Divide NOT necessarily fitting into easy stereotypes, I ultimately remembered every single one of their names.

But I’m getting ahead of myself with enthusiasm. I haven’t even told you what actually happens in the movie now, have I, and shame on me when film in question includes John Connor’s dad slapping people, jokes about cannibalism, threesomes in Hazmat suits, and Chekhov’s Law of Septic Holes. 

Well, maybe we should forget about that one...

Once safe and snug in Mickey’s decently stocked lair, the gang slowly falls ill to the worst form of cabin fever that doesn’t involve skin peeling and pancakes. Because this is a new DVD release, I’ll avoid spoiling anything specific, but trust me when I say The Divide doesn’t shy away from making some pretty dire decisions, from surprise early deaths to physically AND emotionally horrific side effects of, you know, being trapped in a basement during a nuclear holocaust.

Yes, some characters turn to the dark side when the future’s bleakness never lifts. You could sniff that out as soon as Delvin catches Mickey hoarding sausage while the rest of the gang sucks up canned beans. But for as easily as some characters follow the obvious path, The Divide packs plenty of surprises. Arquette’s Marilyn begins as a worried mother and ends as...

Well, let’s just say it’s a brave performance.

Similarly, German’s Eva is our clear heroine from frame one, and while she does serve as our stable center, she also takes turns we never see coming. Xavier Gens pulled off a similar tract with his lead in Frontier(s), an effective but slightly rote torture flick that demonstrated great promise from the French director. The Divide definitely proves Gens to be one to watch, with great skills at getting solid performances and an effectively escalating sense of doom. Credit also goes to screenwriting team Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean, plus a cast that probably ate from the lamest craft service table since Hunger.

High Points

Oh okay fine, I’ve held out this long, but here we go with one SPOILER

I kind of love that The Divide never REALLY gives us answers about its external conflict. We know that the city (and possibly the world) is indeed coated in nuclear fallout, but what that ultimately means for Eva and what went on in those Hazmat wearing soldiers(?) child-keeping lab is left a mystery. Not knowing is somehow so much more horrifying than any explanation would probably suggest.

THUS END'TH SPOILERS

Low Points

While I do think The Divide went further in uglying up its actors than most films of its type would, there’s a part of me that simply wishes one could take the complete cast of Jim Mickle’s Mulberry Street--another fine low budget New York-set horror film--and plug them in instead. The actors in The Divide are perfectly good once they get going, but how common is it to find that seven out of seven survivors of a nuclear apocalypse like, really really ridiculously good-looking.

For such a strong and different genre movie, it’s an absolute shame that the DVD (at least the one Netflix stocks) is naked of any special features. Considering the entire cast was apparently put on starvation diets (and boy do the effects show) it’s incredibly frustrating to feel deprived of a grumpy Dorito filled commentary track where they duct tape the screenwriters down to a chair for putting them through hell or behind-the-scenes featurettes catching Rosanna Arquette sneaking Milky Ways

Lessons Learned

Why you should never let a man pack a bomb shelter: there are certain, um, female toiletries that he might forget are needed on a monthly basis

Removing the helmet of a man whom you’ve just caused intense head trauma to is an act that should be done with extreme care

Nobody but nobody eats Bobby’s penis

Rent/Bury/Buy

I would be all too willing to recommend a bargain-priced blind buy, but since The Divide comes with nary a special feature (well, there IS a scene selection option which is more than one could say for David Lynch releases) then I’ll just say put it on the top of your rental queue. It’s a harsh watch, but if you’re one of those weirdos who really enjoys harsh watches about the end of the world and horror of mankind, then boy is this the movie for you!

Weirdo.

France: The Final Frontier(s)

Of all the historical villains in recent history, it's hard to top Nazis when it comes to real-life monsters. Anybody that's watched a beauty pageant should know that white confidence is scary, and who's more confident in their own genes than Hitler's loyal fans? Retired Nazis are even more disturbing. What does a zealot--in this case, one with the religion of Aryan superiority--do when his or her cause has been defeated?


In the case of Frontier(s), you move to the French countryside, start procreating to produce very tall children, bait wayward travelers and cook some human flesh. The fact that France is now a fascist state in violent turmoil is just gravy.


Our hero/victims are a young group of thieves on the run: a shy Muslim, an obnoxious bleach job straight out of a teen sex comedy, a gun-waving angry guy, his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her bleeding brother. After a botched robbery and even botchier ER stop, the youths split up and set for the border, eventually reuniting at the kind of roadside inn that makes Motel Hell look like a five star resort (okay, maybe just a Best Western with free HBO). Two hostesses--one seemingly escaped from a haute couture runway, the other with more blond rage than Daryl Hannah's Kill Bill stunt double-- offer/demand carnal credit as an appetizer to what turns into a full family meal. The only real drawback is that said family includes a psychotic Third Reich exile and his gargantuan sons.

Frontier(s) follows a long, sometimes illustrious but more often low-rent tradition of hillbilly horror. Terrible things happen to our young cast, some of which is suspenseful and all of which is plain nasty. Recent years have shown that if there's one thing the French do well that isn't croissants, it's blood-soaked slashery flicks. From unique classics (Inside) to deeply flawed yet well-made gorefests (High Tension), French horror is stomping on the roses of Uncle Sam's turf and using the thorns to slowly bleed anyone that gets in the way (at least in the PG13 version; anything stronger usually involves more attacks on genitalia or filleting in the style of the Iron Chef). Frontier(s) is, in the modern definition, your fairly standard torture porn, but it's certainly worth its weight in guts and bones. And let's face it: fertile Nazis make nasty patriarchs.

High Points
A tunnel crawl chase makes the best use of claustrophobia since The Descent


From the vertically gifted family to leading lady Karina Testa, the actors attack their roles with energy and intrigue

The final imagery of our heroines has a paper dollish quality that adds beauty to extreme horror


Low Points
The political backdrop tries to set a chaotic mood, but it's lost too quickly once the predictable cannibal craze kicks in

The middle female child seems to have boiling resentment that's never explored


Call me greedy, but one or two quick glimpses at deformed mine-dwelling children just doesn't satisfy my appetite


Lessons Learned
When fleeing an isolated home at the end of the road, do not jump into the first car you see that's heading in the very direction you just crawled through pig shit to escape from


Nazis will honor last requests with promptness and efficiency


If you knock out one racist murderer with two very large and equally racist brothers, always remember that gloating just buys time for the next one to come along


French hospitals are not particularly hospitable


Rent/Bury/Buy
Rent: It's a definite horror experience, but I don't see Frontier(s) having a strong re-watchability factor. My Netflix disc was rather barebones, and while the gore is unique and refreshingly rough, the plot offers little innovation or food (of the non-human kind) for thought. I would love to see a prequel that allows for a more creative storyline rather than the by-the-numbers backwoods massacre formula that seems to be required of a film of this type. I'm certainly intrigued to see director Xavier Gens' next foray; let's home he keeps the executions but finds a new buildup.