Metacritic-Rezensionen

Better performances might have sold The Divide, but aside from Arquette's fine work as a single mother driven to self-degradation, the cast amplifies the impression of a canned, one-act theater piece.

Unintentionally true to its title, The Divide first goes for a similar bleakness (it barely registers as entertainment), then lurches into a rousing, vengeful finale; both sides of the equation add up to less than zero.

In Xavier Gens's The Divide, the revolution will not be televised, only the degradation of human civility--and in a mire of clichés more toxic to the mind than the radioactive dust that causes everyone's hair to fall out in the wake of a nuclear explosion.

It's doom that we're meant to feel here. And repulsion. I hate to say, but I shrugged.

Plodding and repetitive in its efforts to maintain pressure-cooker intensity, The Divide resembles nothing so much as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode as it brings a sci-fi twist to a familiar scenario about stressed characters who bring out the worst in each other while trapped in close quarters.

Neither intellectually nor viscerally engaging, what The Divide finally offers audiences is the not-terribly-edifying, stagnant experience of being locked in a basement with a pack of assholes.

We wait, from one cringe-inducing, hide-your-face-from-the-screen act after another, to see how much worse the behavior will become.

Relentlessly unpleasant and nihilistic in its approach and execution, The Divide is best appreciated as a virtual instruction manual on how not to behave during a crisis.

The cynic in me notes that the whole, dismal enterprise is just a cheap steal from Roger Corman's 1955 film "Day the World Ended." At least that single set-bound cheapie had a three-eyed mutant to enliven the otherwise stagy proceedings.

Expect the dregs for weeks to come, but I can safely say with absolutely no trepidation that it is unlikely to get worse than a lurid, lewd and loathsome shockfest called The Divide.