‘Divinity’ Review: Sci-Fi Film Sells Immortality

Sold in a shiny glass bottle and advertised on television, immortality has become a commodity in the hedonistic dystopia Divinity, the stunning new film from writer-director Eddie Alcazar. His handcrafted sci-fi nightmare imagines a future in which the artificial elixir for which the film is named stops physical and mental decay, allowing humans to achieve god-like status.

Shot in rich black and white by cinematographer Danny Hiele, the saga introduces Jackson Pierce (a villainous, deranged Stephen Dorff), the greedy son of the scientist who first came up with this liquid of eternal youth. His house and laboratory seem like a modest homage to Fritz Lang’s sets.

Moises Arias and Jason Genao play two alien brothers who take human form and come to Earth to punish Jackson for his disobedience to the natural order of the universe. But in fulfilling their mission, the siblings find themselves at the mercy of the sexual and violent impulses of their new bodies. Their primal performance conveys a convincing alien quality that is both frightening and alluring.

Alcazar builds its ambitious world in just a few locations: an imposing mansion and rock formations across vast desert landscapes. That resourcefulness for achieving astounding production values ​​on a limited budget may be the director’s most obvious point of connection with executive producer Steven Soderbergh, who also lent his name to Alcazar’s first feature, 2018’s Perfect, another visually striking work.

Elsewhere, actress Bella Thorne (wearing an outfit that mimics Kayla Minogue’s from the futuristic “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” video) leads a group of women tasked with rescuing others who, like them, have avoided lifestyle changes. the biology of your body through Divinity. Fertility becomes the greatest example of authenticity in the face of artificially extended life.

A film destined for cult after and subsequent midnight screenings, Divinity does commit the sin of putting style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep the thoughts in mind, even if it’s all a jumble: biblical allusions to brotherly disputes, the self-deceptive dangers of vanity , the idea of ​​reproduction as the holy force of humanity. As Jackson undergoes a horrific transformation from which not even his bodybuilder brother Rip (Michael O’Hearn) can save him, we witness the physical manifestation of his crime.

There’s a tactile retro quality to Divinity, somewhere between a 1950s B-movie and acid surrealism. The climactic battle combines stop-motion animation with live-action footage, a technique the director calls “Meta-Scale”. It’s a dazzling effect that evokes the magic of Ray Harryhausen’s legendary work and gives it new life in modern times. This feat of mixed media is both a spectacle and a sign that Alcazar does not act with self-confidence, but rather with an awareness of the whimsicality of his concept.

“Is death just an illusion?” – asks the voice at the very beginning. The answer, at least for us mere mortals, is no, and that’s probably for the best. The true divinity of our existence, Alcazar argues in his sumptuous if convoluted history, stems from its finite timeline.