DIVERGE. (2016) DIRECTED, WRITTEN AND CO-PRODUCED BY JAMES MORRISON. STARRING IVAN SANDOMIRE, ERIN CUNNINGHAM, JAMIE JACKSON, ANDREW SENSENIG AND CHRIS HENRY COFFEY. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'What do you want? There's no food here!'
'Trust me, you will see her again.'
'They don't realise the importance of your discovery.'
'He said his first word today. He said 'bird.'
'The more it (the virus) spread, the more valuable the compound became. They never had any intention of stopping it.'
'That's how all this got started, trying to find my way back to HER.'
'If you want to protect her, you will stay away.'
'I'm not supposed to be here.'
'We are SURVIVORS. We've earned the right to be here.'
'This is your life. All you have to do is take it.'
I love a nice post-apocalyptic movie, especially if the Earth's population has been wiped out by a virus or something nice and simple to understand like that. The key to getting me to like a post-apocalyptic film is to keep it simple. Anything too complicated and I'm scratching my head like I've just spent a day in kindergarten, lol. Yeah, think about it, lol again...!
Anyway, the plot of DIVERGE was mostly quite accessible, until towards the end when things got a bit confusing, but we'll talk about that later on. The movie starts with a man and a woman, Chris and Anna, struggling their way across an obviously post-apocalyptic landscape, barren and devoid of any warmth or sustenance. They're pushing what's left of their worldly goods in a battered pram, a pram in which there's no baby...
They're bundled up in coats and hoods and they're cold and hungry and frightened to death and pissed-off and all the things you'd expect from the last two people left on Earth. Well, they're not exactly the last two people left on Earth.
A Russian guy approaches them on their weary travels and the only reason Chris doesn't blow his head off out of fear is the fact that he- the Russian guy- comes bearing gifts. A few cans of food, to be precise. Chris and Anna wolf down the grub. They're starving, so hungry that, if they could, they'd even eat at McDonalds, lol.
The Russian guy is a real weirdo, in Chris's opinion. He tells Chris that Anna is infected with the virus that's wiped out half of humanity and, sure enough, she does have some horribly sore-looking translucent blistery things on the skin of her neck.
Mr. Russia tells Chris that he needs to look up a guy called Dmitri Tarkov. Next thing Chris knows, he hurts his foot on a trap in the sea and suddenly he's back in the real world again, the world before the viral pandemic took hold.
He sees his wife as she was, being met from her work by the pre-apocalyptic Chris, all suited and booted and shaved and combed and clean, a far cry from the scruffy hippy/hipster Chris who's somehow survived the pandemic. He really needs to clean himself up, the poor fellow.
When Chris, the Chris who's back in the real world, finds the mysterious Dmitri Tarkov, he discovers that not only is Tarkov the Russian guy from the post-apocalyptic world but he's also an expert on time-travel. He's the author of a book called SPLITTING TIME- THE MECHANICS OF TIME TRAVEL. It sounds utterly riveting- yawn!- and I'm sure it'll be a bestseller in the time it takes to say 'dystopian futures are still all the rage in film and literature and always will be...'
Well, that explains how he was he able to send Chris back in time to the world before the pandemic, but it doesn't explain why he did it. In a series of flashbacks, we pick up a bit of Chris's back-story and find out why it's so vital that he was sent back in time to the world as we know it. He's clearly too late to stop Hitler, so what's the deal here?
It seems that Chris, happily married to Anna and with a beautiful little son called Dylan (look at his darling little frogs' leggies in the swing, just look at them!), was a research scientist before the pandemic took hold. And very hard science it was too, not the easy stuff like H20 equals water and stuff like that. Stuff we learned in school and stuff. You know, stuff...
In the pre-apocalyptic world, Chris developed a cure for the horrible virus, the virus that started out affecting livestock worldwide and then spread to humans, a ghastly thought. The icky neck-blisters were the sign that someone was infected. In the real world, the world before, Anna was tragically infected with the virus and so was Tarkov's daughter Daisy.
Furthermore, a rival company was putting heavy pressure on Chris to come and work for them and bring his compound (the cure) with him. Why are they so keen to buy up all Chris's pretty blue flowers, the ones containing the antidote to the deathly virus?
Do they have an ulterior motive? You bet your ass they do. Will Future-Chris be able to prevent his Past-Self from making the mistakes he made before? We'll have to see. It'd be nice if we all got the chance to do that, wouldn't it, go back in time and correct past mistakes? I'd definitely be the first in that queue, anyway. So many mistakes, lol. If it weren't for mistakes, I'd never have done anything at all.
I admit I got very confused towards the end of the film when there were first of all two Dmitris and then two Chrises. Unlike Anna, lol, who didn't seem fazed in the slightest that she had two husbands all of a sudden. Hmmm, two husbands. What would that be like...?
Two husbands to demand sex and food and clean shirts from you while simultaneously cheating with other women, forgetting to take out the bins and forgetting birthdays, anniversaries and that you have four kids and not just three and that therefore he must have left one behind at the bowling alley. Oh joy unconfined. Two husbands? Better stick with just the one, love.
Anyway, because both Chrises now looked identical, I couldn't make out which was Future-Chris and which was Past-Chris. Consequently, I didn't understand the ending, which was a shame as I'd hugely enjoyed the movie up to that point.
I'd still recommend DIVERGE to any fans of science fiction movies or post-apocalyptic movies or even time-travel films. I adored the pandemic element. It reminded me of Vincent Price in the excellent movie THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and also the film RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR, a terrifying film about a chemical terrorist attack that scared the living daylights out of me because it could so easily happen. Pandemic films are brilliant, though. Just as long as they never happen in real life, obviously...
I also loved the Dmitri Tarkov character, a handsome, trim, fit older man with the sexiest Russian accent imaginable. Disappointingly, he doesn't seem to be Russian in real life, but there's a fine example of the sexy older man. That's the kind of guy I go for normally. Hell, I'm not nicknamed Daddy Issues by my friends and family for nothing, lol...
The award winning sci-fi thriller DIVERGE hits VOD and iTunes February 6th!
Experience the reality twisting indie sci-fi DIVERGE February 6th!
Gravitas Ventures brings the festival hit to iTunes and VOD after a successful international screening tour.
The time-bending story follows a solitary survivor of a deadly virus who is given the chance to reclaim his life by altering his past.
DIVERGE stars Ivan Sandomire (Fluidic), Jamie Jackson (The Greatest Showman), Andrew Sensing (Upstream Color, We Are Still Here), and features a hypnotic new score by the Blair Brothers (Green Room, Hold the Dark).
Synopsis: In the aftermath of a mysterious pandemic that’s turned cities into wastelands, a man desperately searches for a way to cure his ailing wife as she battles a deadly virus. When he is captured by a cryptic stranger, he is offered the chance to save not only his wife but the world.
Equal parts science fiction and morality tale, DIVERGE tells the story of how the choices of one can have dire consequences for all. “Philosophical, poetic and one for the thinkers. You may find yourself still seated and trying to make sense of the future well after the credits roll.” ***** - WHAT’S HOT LONDON
About Gravitas Ventures
Gravitas Ventures, a Red Arrow Entertainment Group company, is a leading all rights distributor of independent feature films and documentaries. Founded in 2006, Gravitas connects independent filmmakers and producers with distribution opportunities across the globe. Working with talented directors and producers, Gravitas Ventures has distributed thousands of films into over a hundred million homes in North America or over one billion homes worldwide. Recent releases includeScore: A Film Music Documentary, California Typewriter, Legion of Brothers, Katie Holmes’ feature directorial debut, All We Had, Colin Hanks’ All Things Must Pass,Being Evel from Academy Award winning director Daniel Junge and producer Johnny Knoxville, and For The Love of Spock from Director Adam Nimoy.
For more information, please visit gravitasventures.com, and follow @GravitasVOD on Twitter and @gravitasventures on Instagram.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment