What if you survived the apocalypse just to die at the hands of some selfish New Yorker who doesn’t want to share his beans with you? This is one of the many hard questions asked by the upcoming film The Divide.
The official Summary of the movie goes like this:
In this graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller, nine strangers—all tenants of a New York high rise apartment—escape a nuclear attack by hiding out in the building’s bunker-like basement. Trapped for days underground with no hope for rescue, and only unspeakable horrors awaiting them on the other side of the bunker door, the group begins to descend into madness, each turning on one another with physical and psycho-sexual torment. As supplies dwindle, and tensions flare, and they grow increasingly unhinged by their close quarters and hopelessness, each act against one another becomes more depraved than the next. While everyone in the bunker allows themselves to be overcome by desperation and lose their humanity, one survivor holds onto a thin chance for escape even with no promise of salvation on the outside.
Well, if anything was ever going to make me want to go assemble some cyanide capsules it’s that fun hypothetical scenario. “Psycho-sexual torment.” Why? Who does that help?
Maybe these people just lived in a building full of assholes from the jump and didn’t realize it until they locked themselves in a bunker with a bored serial killer or five. Or, maybe that bunker wasn’t up to code and they’re simply feeling the side effects of chemical agents not yet determined.
I understand the tensions flaring and getting defensive but how do they all devolve into straight malicious torturous madness? This reminds me of why I didn’t like Hostel. Sure, I didn’t really have the stomach for random acts of unprovoked violence, but it was really the unprovoked part that didn’t sit quite right with me.
In most senseless violence movies, we see crazy folk acting crazy because stupid or unlucky folk happened by. We see angry people going on angry rages because they’re incapable of feeling other emotions. These things are just rational enough.
Hostel, and now The Divide (it seems), are just not giving me enough rational. How did the hostel keep getting business from both idiot travelers and psycho-killers? It was an enterprise with no explained business model. Now, The Divide wants me to believe that if you lock 12 people in a room and slowly take away their supplies they will all devolve into “physical and psycho-sexual torment?” I can only suspend my disbelief so far…
At least they promise I’ll get to see Milo Ventimiglia and his crooked smile; unfortunately I see no sign of the man in this opening scene from the official movie site:
The Divide will be in select theaters on January 20th 2012.
Website: thedividethemovie.com
