tlavideo.com

Review

I originally posted The Divide for our gay customers because rumors stated that the film featured some minor male-on-male content. The movie DOES feature a gay kiss, but it isn't romantic, sexually-titillating or pleasing to the eye in any way.

The Divide, the newest experiment in grotesquerie from French provocateur Xavier Gens, opens during a nuclear attack on New York City. Several residents of an apartment building (Milo Ventimiglia, Lauren German, Courtney B. Vance, Ashton Holmes and Rosanna Arquette included) hurry to the basement where they lock the door behind them and choose to wait for the falling radioactive dust to lose potency. They are led by Micky (Michael Biehn), the building’s superintendent – an angry survivalist who isn’t too keen on sharing his hoard or food and water. After a long, though indeterminate, amount of time and some major interference from a mysterious group of futuristic-space-suit-wearing scientists beyond the basement door, the collective group mind begins to fracture – resulting in graphic violence and torment.

The aforementioned gay kiss comes toward the end of the film when Bobby (Michael Eklund), a bully from the start, corners Sam (Spanish actor Iván González (I)) and tries to intimidate him into a little aggressive, time-killing man-on-man love. Both actors are attractive and the scene might have been hot had Eklund’s character not already lost his mind, shaved his body bald, applied mascara and generally made himself look like some sinister angel of death and destruction. Under those circumstances, the whole thing just comes off as icky – we feel Gonzalez’s pain as he attempts to squirm away from Eklund’s advances.

The Divide features impressive, elaborately-designed cinematography and the performances are all first rate - Rosanna Arquette is particularly bone-chilling as a distraught mother who copes with the loss of her daughter by offering up her body to the men of the group for some truly freaky, dangerously unhinged sex. There is no denying that Xavier Gens is a talented filmmaker, but he relies far too heavily on shocking violence and gore as a way to inject excitement into the proceedings. Most viewers, however, are not likely to find it exciting. “Brutal” and “bleak” are more apt descriptors. The premise of the film – a group of apocalypse survivors turning on one another in confinement – is grim enough without all the carnage. I like a good gory action/horror flick even more than most movie lovers and I never demand an unearned happy ending, but this one left me cold and in need of a hug.

 -- Robert O'Neill