mdtinney's Movie Review of The Divide

Michael Biehn signed on to do this Campy Thriller?
mdtinney - wrote on 04/19/12

That's the answer for those of you who might see the trailer and think about watching this one. No, don't be fooled by it. I've rated this 1 star mainly because I couldn't rate it any lower, I did not get bored (enough) to just stop watching it and it didn't have any giant plot holes (because there is no plot to talk about). I was disappointed when I realized this isn't a movie about a nuclear fallout. Its not. Its a movie about a group of people trapped in a cellar. Sure they are locked in a nuclear shelter and they hid there because someone decided to attack the USA with nukes but they could have been running away from Godzilla or hordes of zombies. It really doesn't matter. Once the door is locked the movie turns into a survival horror/thriller flick. The opening sequence with Lauren German (the eye candy of the movie) staring out the window at the falling warheads and the complete destruction is spectacular. But its only about a minute long. The attempts to explain this issue just confuse things even further. In the end someone just welds the shelter door shut from the outside and we're left with a bunch of people fighting for cans of beans and water. And going insane. It could have worked. Its not a bad idea for a movie. The Road is a great movie about surviving a nuclear fallout. But The Road was based on a novel by the great Cormac McCarthy. This one wasn't. Its boring, clichéd and predictable. The screenplay is bad. The characters are unrealistic and poorly developed. None of them seem to have had any family or friends on the outside because none of them shows any concern of what might have happened to his/her parents, girlfriend, etc. They're too busy trying to figure out what kind of goodies Mickey the grumpy super has hidden in his safe. The movie is predictable to a point that you know what's going to happen after the first 10 minutes. I did. And I also did you a big favor by watching the whole thing so now you don't have to.