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In The Divide, survivors of a nuclear blast find themselves facing a bunker full of madness.

A nuke that wrecks New York City is just the beginning of the nightmare in upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller The Divide. A group of people, trapped in a fallout shelter beneath a devastated apartment building, quickly descend into depravity as their mental and physical states deteriorate.

“No one opens that door until the radiation clears,” says ruler of the subterranean roost Mickey (played by Michael Biehn). “You want to survive, you listen to me.”

But Mickey’s best-laid plans quickly go awry, as the shaken survivors face unexpected threats from the ruined outside world as well as from within their dingy bunker. It’s like Lord of the Flies meets The Road, all jammed into a claustrophobic basement.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

The movie delivers several surprises that make it more interesting than your run-of-the-mill fallout flick, but three characters in particular — ringleaders Bobby (Michael Eklund) and Josh (Milo Ventimiglia), and their new “friend” Marilyn (Rosanna Arquette) — plunge deep into violent, psychosexual degeneracy. Throughout the film, the actors’ makeup evolves, showing the effects of the radiation and isolation.

You can get an advance look at the physical toll, as evidenced by the actors’ makeup, in three sets of character-progression stills in the gallery above, provided exclusively to Wired.com by Anchor Bay Entertainment. We’re not talking about monstrous mutation here — nobody turns into The Hulk or grows a second head or anything — but the on-screen transformations won makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski the Best Make Up FX award at Sitges film festival this year.

Also included in the gallery: More production stills, poster art and a couple of pages from The Divide comic book (which tells more about the mysterious fate of children in the post-apocalyptic world). See the movie’s opening scene below.

The Divide, directed by Xavier Gens (Hitman), opens in January 2012.