The Divide

Watched a DVD of The Divide (2011) last night - or most of it. As much as I could stand. It was one of the most depressing, repugnant, senseless films I have tried to watch in a long time. I didn't expect it to be a bundle of fun. It was after all a post-Apocalyptic movie. But is that any reason to have most of its characters as complete arseholes? Surely part of the interest in movies like this is watching how people react to and try to overcome the dire situation into which they have been plunged by catastrophic events? Surely it's what has happened that should be horrific, not the random cast of characters? Most of the ones in this film did not deserve to survive. The crunch came when one of the characters, played by Michael Biehne (wasted here), was tortured by some of the others for the combination of a locked door leading into a secret inner room. This resulted in him having one finger graphically sliced off his hand. It was a stupid, senseless scene and I could neither believe the character's stubbornness that resulted in this nor the glee with which he was assaulted. Was this to illustrate how events were making the characters degenerate into savagery? If so, it didn't convince me.

The other element that failed to convince were those outside the cellar in which the characters had escaped the holocaust and were now trapped. These were military types in environmental protection suits, heavily armed with guns, living inside polythene tunnels, alongside which others were being experimented on in sealed chambers. How the hell was all this set up so quickly and, presumably, extensively after the devastation we saw at the start of the film? The whole thing seemed ill-thought out and ridiculous.