Review: The Sci-Fi Film DIVISION 19 is a Confusing Mess and Should Be Avoided

I recently shared a trailer for Division 19 and I thought it looked good. Then, I got to watch it. It was bad and not the good kind. My wife and I get each other bad movies for Christmas every year for some good riffing. This film was not so much fun. Some spoilers are ahead and the film will be available on April 5.

Let’s start with the positives of the film. I felt like the acting was decent. It wasn’t great, but most of the performances were solid. The premise is also very interesting. People subscribe to a service that then lets them influence the lives of prisoners. Sounds very intriguing and like some interesting commentary with how our world works.

Now, let’s look at the not so good parts of the film. First, remember how we all made fun of George Lucas for his use of wipe transitions in the Star Wars films? Yeah, this movie uses an absurd amount of fade to black transitions. There were one or two times where it made sense to use that type of transition, but when almost every transition is the same, it gets a little annoying. Second, they use the word consumerism a lot and I’m not completely convinced they know what the word means. I think they were wanting to use the word profits but wanted an -ism for some reason. Third, this movie feels very much like a bunch of high school seniors made it.

I could not tell you what the point of the movie actually is as the film doesn’t tell you anything about what’s going on. I know that the main character, Hardin, was a prisoner. His brother and brother’s friend argue and then decide to break him out while he’s being transferred, but then Hardin escapes on his own. He then wanders through Hoboville (my name not the film’s) and meets some other people who are trying to get away from the lack of privacy provided by society. However, we don’t know anything about what led to the world being where it is. We find out that while Hardin was in prison is when prisons started up the subscription service thing and then the prisoners were never told somehow. We also know that in what is supposedly a very populated city, no one leaves their house.

There are almost never any people in the streets or even cars driving around. Yet this is where the guy who I thought was the mayor, but I guess he was the President or something, lives. No world building happens in the film when some world building could’ve explained a few things.

Another problem is that Hardin, his brother, and his brother’s friend all look very similar and when everything is really dark, it’s hard to tell who is who, and what is happening. Combine that with the lack of world building and lack of explanation as to why I should care about any character and things don’t bode well.

The abundant misuse of the word “consumerism” and how I think the movie progressed made me believe that the writer wanted to make the movie seem really deep and like a look at a plague in our society, but it falls short because the viewer knows nothing. The prisons are introduced as the bad guys for wanting to simply make a profit.

The “good guys” are a group of rebels wanting to put an end to the prisons because they’re greedy and took away people’s privacy, but they don’t really do anything other than try to break Hardin out and do really lame parkour. The prisons however then introduce a plan to help rehabilitate some inmates (some like Hardin would be kept as their money makers I think) and we’re supposed to think that this isn’t acceptable.

Meanwhile, the political leader ends up between the two and I think he eventually decides that both sides are wrong. Or maybe he decides the right path is in the middle of the two sides? I honestly got really confused by what this movie was trying to say. Also, I could not tell you why the movie is called Division 19. They never explain what Division 19 is and I don’t remember it being mentioned anywhere.

I enjoy some bad movies. This movie just made no sense and made Manos look at least somewhat put together. Division 19 is too confusing and it tries too hard to seem smart.