"…unforgiving…gut-wrenching…brilliantly constructed…mixing memory fragments, fantasies and striking photography into a surreal yet angst-driven scream" - Steve Puchalski, Shock Cinema

"A brutal masterpiece of stark, raving, hallucinatory madness" - Ken McIntyre, Sleazegrinder.com

"A powerful gut punch. Truly subversive horror cinema." – Joseph O’Brien, Rue Morgue Magazine

"...a film that is itself a gaping wound...a scorchingly personal, sumptuously troubling ode to psychological damage and spiritual abasement. Its final judgement seems to defy every self-help book ever written." - Gene Gregorits, Nomad Press, author of DEAD ON CAMERA

Profound horror. Digs deeper into the aberrant psyche than any film I have ever seen.' -Peter Filardi, screenwriter of FLATLINERS, THE CRAFT , writer/director of RICKY 6.

"Easily one of the most disturbing things in this year's festival." – Wendy Solomon, Chicago Underground Film Festival

"Poetically shocking. A truly cinematic experience." – Nacho Cerda, Director, AFTERMATH,  GENESIS

"Unrelenting…disturbing…you won’t forget it" - Ray Pride, Newcity

"A headfirst hallucinatory dive into the raw, fractured mindscape of a child killer. Disturbing, compelling, not for the faint of heart" – David Leach, Monday Magazine

"Wrenching" – Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun Times

"Brilliant" – Peter Christian Hall, The Independent Film Monitor

"exquisite and disturbing" - Rupert Bottenberg, The Montreal Mirror

"…beautiful imagery…truly challenging" - Piotr Borowiec, Hour Magazine

"Very unsettling…a thought provoking and well-crafted effort that deserves attention" – Chip Lamey, Video Crypt

"The weekend screening of director Mitch Davis’ DIVIDED INTO ZERO, before a packed audience, set the tone for Canada’s first underground film festival." – Sarah Schmidt, The Globe And Mail, writing on the ANTIMATTER FESTIVAL

Steve Puchalski, SHOCK CINEMA #15, Fall 1999

Three years in the making, this harsh but extremely personal celluloid journey, courtesy of writer-director Mitch Davis took home the jury prize for Best Narrative Short at this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival. A disturbingly fragmented, 34 minute examination of one man’s life, the story riccochets between three different periods, with a trio of actors as this self-described "wanderer" (Max Firatli at 10-years old, Philippe Daoust at age 30 and Griffith Brewer at 70). With his cesarean birth only beginning an obsession with blood, he begins slicing up his arms with a bare razor blade after the childhood death of his parents, and as an adult, progresses to paying to be cut-up and pissed-on by his lovers. Meanwhile, his voice-over attempts to come to terms with these unorthodox preoccupations, as the film’s shocking imagery exposes his haunted, razor-sliced "ghosts". Not for the easily offended, the script touches on topics that have no easy answers, and ends with a gut-wrenching finale of pedophilic torture. Marinated in a lifetime of emotional pain, DIVIDED INTO ZERO is less impressive for its grim narrative than for the way in which it unfolds – mixing memory fragments, fantasies and striking photography into a surreal yet angst-driven scream. Brilliantly constructed, it’s also so densely packed that it’s difficult to appreciate on a lone viewing. Not the easiest film to embrace, its mindset is so dark and unforgiving that I was actually relieved that I wasn’t able to make a more personal connection to this screwed up protagonist.

Joseph O’Brien, RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE # 17, Summer 2000

SHORT SHARP SHOCK

DIVIDED INTO ZERO

Starring Phillipe Daoust, Max Firatli & Griffith
Brewer Written, Produced, Photographed, Edited, Directed (and most likely catered) by Mitch Davis

Infliction Films

Every so often there comes a point when you've just got to wonder if there's any point in watching horror films anymore. The days of the truly subversive exploitation movie seem long gone, supplanted by an endless parade of retarded retreads and pointless remakes of old TV shows. Sure The Blair Witch Project was scary, but there was precious little subtext beyond the "boo" factor, and now even its small charms have been knocked aside by the PTB to make way for a sequel that no one wants or needs. Face it, we're a long way from the days of Last House on the Left or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, when audiences left theaters feeling like they'd been clobbered with the business end of a coal shovel and wondering where they'd lost that sense of personal safety they'd come in with. Horror movies today are vacuum-sealed under childproof caps, artificially flavoured, plastic wrapped and sanitized for your protection; guaranteed not to disturb, frighten, involve or entertain.

Fortunately there are still guys out there like Mitch Davis, grindhouse aficionados who have grown into filmmakers in their own right. Guys who knew who Lucio Fulci was before Quentin Tarantino "discovered" The Beyond, and have taken the next step, continuing the tradition of their influences without resorting to the kind of obnoxious drink-your-own-piss subreferencing popularized by the aforementioned where-is-he-now and RM's personal favorite whipping boy Kevin Williamson. No sir, the only piss-drinking that goes on in Davis' Divided Into Zero is of the entirely literal sort.

Make no mistake, this is a visceral and uncompromising film, horror in all its bleeding, corpse-mutilating, 10-year-old-girl-nailed-to-a-wall-with-razor-blades-stuffed-in-her-mouth glory. In its scant 32 minutes you'll discover more eye-damaging, emotionally-undermining, mind-terrorizing mania than is to be found in the entire Dimension Films catalogue. It prods and provokes the viewer in a lot of psychologically vulnerable spots. It is the cinematic equivalent of The Bad Touch.

A bleak glimpse into a disturbed mind, told in a fractured, non-narrative form, Divided is primarily a film of images (we don't hear a human voice until nearly ten minutes in). As the result of a botched C-section, our protagonist (played at separate points in his life by Daoust, Firatli and Brewer) has grown up with "a fascination for bleeding fine cuts"; said fetish first manifests itself in acts of self-mutilation. Later, this desire is directed outward.

Filmed primarily in grainy, blown-out Super 8 and 16mm, Davis juxtaposes shots of seeming innocence (swing sets and ladders) directly against more shocking footage (small children, faces covered in blood), only to return to those earlier shots, now seemingly corrupted by what has come before. These disparate moments slowly cohese and gain context as the film carries forward, building downhill momentum to deliver a powerful gut punch. It is a combination that takes the movie out of the realm of shock-for-shock-alone and into that of the truly transgressive.

Needless to say, only the strong of mental and intestinal fortitude need apply; Davis didn't intend this to be his calling card to Hollywood studios looking to offer him a three-picture deal and a chance to direct Chuck Norris in back-to-back sequels to Top Dog. This reviewer certainly hopes that he'll continue to press forward with this kind of daring, independent and truly subversive horror cinema, and can't wait until he makes the leap to feature-length.

BOB SMITH, CHAOTIC ORDER #14, WINTER 2002

Mitch Davis' self-confessed baby (see the i/view this issue), Divided... is a trip over 3 points in life featuring a character who is forced to grow at a young age but is then similarly forced by circumstances to remain set in a regime which evolves slowly over time. Shown in a non-linear framework the film switches between these three points as the character as a young boy self-mutilates is then in adulthood drawn into S&M relationships where a female is seen to urinate on him in a dominant act.  Into old age the man has turned the tables as he becomes the aggressor, kidnapping a girl and mutilating her, getting a kick out of seeing her bleed and cry, a shot which is echoed through a shot of the middle-aged man squeezing droplets into a doll's eyes and watching the "tears" roll down her face. The downbeat nature of the film echoes that of Doug Buck's Cutting Moments but eschews the suburban setting to concentrate on a more primitive estate-like setting. The camerawork and colors again, like Subconscious Cruelty reflect a knowledge of horror from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Bava and Argento. Grim but brilliant. 

More full reviews to come shortly.

Read CHAOTIC ORDER MAGAZINE's  interview with Mitch Davis

Read SCREENSHOT MAGAZINE's interview with Mitch Davis (in German)

Read SEX AND GUTS MAGAZINE's interview with Mitch Davis

Read Tuomas Riskala's Article For ESPOO CINE

 Read SLEAZEGRINDER.COM's Review

Read FILM-O-HOLIC's Zero comments in their report on the 2001 Espoo Cine festival (in Finnish)

Read OFFSCREEN's Zero comments in their Report on the 1999 FanTasia Film Festival