International Premiere / Features – International

Showing @ George Square Theatre Tue 21 @ 22:30 & Filmhouse 1 Wed 22 @ 22:05

Xavier Gens / USA / Germany / Canada / 2011 / 112 min / English

When the apocalypse comes, students can rest assured that they will be arm-in-arm with the cockroaches as the most likely to survive, thanks to an excellent ability to live off tinned baked beans. Unfortunately, nobody in The Divide is a student, so when beans is all there is the outcome can only be bad.

In an apocalyptic world where New York is being destroyed by nuclear war, a group of strangers are forced underground in the hope of clinging on to survival. Trapped inside a bunker, there soon becomes an infectious cabin fever that unhinges the resented hierarchy, leading to instability, cruelty and fear.

After an unpromising start full of overacting and clichéd one-liners, this film does a complete U-turn into a tense, well-paced and excellently plotted thriller. Director Xavier Gens and writers Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean have captured an impressively complex insight into the delicately balanced psyche of a group of people under unimaginable pressure. The character transformations are both disturbing and unexpected, and Michael Eklund as Bobby is particularly impressive. Some scenes are pretty gory and require a strong stomach, but whilst the violence is quite abundant it sits appropriately within the context of the story which focusses much more on psychology. There are a few annoying movie ticks in here such as the heroine whose appearance, whilst perhaps a little tired, remains flawless while everyone else turns into haggard, balding monsters, but this does little to detract from an otherwise impressive film.