Conventional Boxes

Trapped in a bunker after a nuclear strike, a bunch of NYC residents find it hard to maintain their sanity in The Divide, directed by Xavier Gens. Michael Biehn initially leads the survivors as they come to terms with what's happened but as the days pass tensions erupt and the safety they sought evaporates. The acting is not bad and it's got a suitably grim atmosphere with some nice patches of dread here and there but it's way too predictable and as the events unfold it swiflty limps into pretty typical B-movie fare.

Stephen Dorff plays a secret agent, kidnapped, locked in a trunk and tortured for the President's location in the preposterous Brake. Presumably some bigwig greenlit this project after the success of Buried as they're essentially the same film, man in a box for 90 mins with slightly different accoutrement, in this case Dorff gets a CB radio, torch & telephone to play with and I suppose his performance is reasonable but it's so ridiculous I found it distracting and like Divide suffers from a distinct lack of imagination. If you're looking for some fairly brainless entertainment I'd go with The Divide if I were you.