The Divide, the latest film from young French director Xavier Gens, opens in chaotic desolation. Amid fast, shaky visuals that mimic that of Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, a riot occurs with people screaming and running frantically inside an apartment building. Outside the walls, nuclear missiles totally obliterate New York City. It’s a preview of what is to come: a bleak vision muddled by uneven form and a hopeless depiction of humanity.
This opening sequence culminates with Mickey (Michael Biehn), the authoritative apartment supervisor, closing the doors of his personal fallout shelter, in which he and a group of tenants fight to survive. The group includes step brothers Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) and Adrien (Ashton Holmes), their friend Bobby (Michael Eklund), a mother (Rosanna Arquette) and her young daughter (Abbey Thickson), a black man named Delvin (Courtney B. Vance), and Ivan (Lauren German), a beautiful young woman, and her passive fiance, Sam (Ivan Gonzalez).
Initially, these individuals struggle to get along, but a collective gratefulness for life trumps their differences. As time passes, though, and hope dwindles—particularly after the food supply runs low and the enemy welds the doors of their shelter shut—the group’s unity begins to disintegrate. Trust is lost, and paranoia settles in.
At this point, The Divide shifts direction. What started as sci-fi drama quickly turns into sci-fi horror. Such unevenness becomes apparent when Marilyn, the middle-aged mother, moves from lamenting the abduction of her daughter to slipping off her clothes and offering up her body to Bobby. Changing genres erratically, with a swift shift into darkness, Gens seemingly becomes so determined to portray the inherent depravity of his characters that he disregards narrative transition, which in turn triggers the film’s free fall into bleakness.