The most utterly grim film you’ll be likely to see this year, The Divide does itself no favours with promotional artwork that makes it look like some sort of science fiction movie, possibly of the James Cameron variety. And while certainly a ‘post-apocalypse’ story, the film is closer in feel to the dark, uncompromisingly savage French horror films that director Xavier Gens has emerged out of.

Opening with nuclear missiles raining down on New York, the film is almost entirely set in an apartment building basement where a handful of survivors and the caretaker find themselves, brought together by the luck of who could make it down there in time and entirely unprepared. Well, perhaps not entirely – caretaker Mickey (Michael Biehn) seems to have a survivalist instinct, possibly due to his experiences of 9/11, and so there is a limited stock of food, a power generator and a take-charge attitude that sets him up as the film’s villain. But as isolation, paranoia and mistrust start to spread – helped by a brief invasion by hazmat suited, gun-toting outsiders that adds a certain drama but is ultimately unexplained and really feels like a scene from a different film entirely – so the veneer of civilisation is stripped away, leading to a world of brutality and horror.

This is an extraordinarily bleak and nasty little film, with moments of astonishing nastiness. The uniformly excellent cast do a good job of portraying characters descending into madness, which is impressive given how thinly drawn many of these people are. Given the fast-paced opening, it’s unsurprising that it takes a while to figure out exactly who is who is this group, and that’s a bit of a problem when you’re trying to understand their motivations or sympathise with their plight – but having said that, Gens does a much better job of both fleshing out his characters and creating a realistic sense of moral collapse than a lot of other directors have done with ostensibly similar material – think of assorted zombie apocalypse films where badly acted, one-dimensional characters bicker endlessly and you’ll appreciate what a fine job Gens has done with this.

If you hate the extremities of horror cinema, this might all feel a bit much to watch – even as a hardened fan, I was taken aback at a couple of moments of unpleasantness, and the film is not afraid to push at the boundaries of sexual violence – so be warned. This is not entertaining in any conventional sense. It is, however, a fascinating, unsettling and savage film that is more genuinely apocalyptic than more conventional end-of-the-world movies could ever hope to be.

DAVID FLINT

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