FrightFest 2011 Review: THE DIVIDE

rating: 3

Xavier Gens shot onto the horror scene with his pleasantly gory if somewhat uneven Frontier(s) before venturing off into Hollywood for the awkward video game adaptation of Hitman. That film, something of a confused mess for even the rickety standards of video game adaps, reeked of a studio breathing down the helmer's neck, yet now, with The Divide, without a major studio pulling the strings, he seems plenty more at home, and has still managed to attract a few notable names to the project. It's still packed with flaws for sure, but it's impressively shot and well-acted, liable to become a straight-to-video gem of sorts when a release is secured. The Divide starts swiftly with a bang - literally, with a nuclear bomb decimating New York City - which for any film, let alone one running in at 110 minutes, suggests a director feeling an incredible sense of confidence in their script, not having to rely on preambles and pointless build-up. Once the frantic post-bomb rush is over, and our group of survivors have shacked up inside the basement of an apartment complex supervised by Mickey (Michael Biehn), things calm down a bit as the group try to make head or tail of what is going on, though they don't get long, because soon enough a gang of suited and booted soldiers in hazmat suits show up, and after a tussle, the survivors have their fates literally sealed, as the soldiers weld their only apparent exit shut. The rest of the film deals with the survivors' attempts to pick up the pieces. If this film suffers for any reason, it's simply for its inability to really push the boat out, at least in its first two acts; the characters are positively stock, from Beihn's racist, cantankerous old dictator, to the gang of punk upstart assholes (led by Milo Ventimiglia), the good girl, the geek and the deranged oddball. These personalities are at odds throughout, yet don't really do much of true consequence until the punchy third act. Still, it only barely manages to justify the overlong runtime and until then rather clichéd narrative, as the group inevitably splits into factions and a war of the sexes emerges beneath the surface. It's a shame the film doesn't have more going on in its first hour as the film has some fiercely committed performances, especially Ventimiglia and Michael Eklund as the psychotic double act running the show. Ventimiglia gets to ham it up and prove he has some verve to boast about while Biehn, who has deserved a role this meaty for some time, is perfect as the tired old man even if he ends up spending far too much time tied to a chair when the more sensible characters should have quicker recognised his sanity and let him loose on the tyrannical upstarts. Still, The Divide offers proof that an impressive third act can compensate for two only occasionally diverting ones. Gens latches onto the feral insanity of the situation with kinky and dangerous character turns, leading to an unexpected and satisfying resolution that nevertheless leaves a few interesting questions up in the air. Gens' disaster pic has visual flair aplenty and an explosive third reel which mostly forgives the inoffensively routine first two.