Sold in a shiny glass bottle and advertised on TV, immortality has been commodified in the hedonist dystopia of “Divinity,” the startling new film from writer-director Eddie Alcazar. His hand-crafted sci-fi nightmare imagines a future where a man-made elixir, after which the movie is titled, 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 Jaxxon Pierce (a villainously deranged Stephen Dorff), the greedy son of the scientist who first concocted this liquid of eternal youth. His home and laboratory feel like humble homages to Fritz Lang’s sets.
Moises Arias and Jason Genao play two extraterrestrial brothers who have taken on human form and come to Earth to punish Jaxxon for his defiance against the natural order of the universe. But as they carry out their mission, the siblings find themselves caught up in the sexual and violent impulses of their new bodies. Their primal performances capture a convincing alienness, at once frightening and alluring.
Alcazar builds his ambitious world within only a handful of locations: an imposing mansion and the rock formations of vast desert landscapes. That resourcefulness, mining striking production value from a tight 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 astounding effort.
Bella Thorne in the movie “Divinity.”
(Utopia and Sumerian)
Elsewhere, actor Bella Thorne (clad in an outfit that mimics Kyle Minogue’s getup in the futuristic “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” music video) leads a group of women tasked with rescuing others who, like them, have avoided changing the biology of their bodies through Divinity. Fertility becomes the greatest example of authenticity in the face of artificially extended lives.
A movie destined for a cult following and subsequent midnight showings, “Divinity” does commit the sin of placing style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep one’s mind spinning along with it, even if it’s all a jumble: biblical nods to brotherly disputes, the self-deceiving dangers of vanity, the notion of reproduction as humanity’s holy power. As Jaxxon undergoes a monstrous transformation from which not even his bodybuilder brother Rip (Michael O’Hearn) can save him, we witness the physical manifestation of his transgression.
There’s a retro tactile quality to “Divinity,” situated somewhere between 1950s B movie and acid-trip surrealism. A climactic battle blends stop-motion animation with live-action footage, a technique the filmmaker calls “Meta-Scope.” It’s a dazzling effect that invokes the magic of Ray Harryhausen’s legendary work while invigorating it for modern times. The mixed-medium feat is both a sight to behold and a sign that Alcazar is not operating from a place of self-seriousness but rather awareness of his concept’s bizarreness.
“Is death just an illusion?” a voice asks early on. The answer, at least for us mere mortals, is no, and that’s likely for the better. The true divinity of our existence, Alcazar argues in his sumptuous if convoluted tale, comes from its finite timeline.
‘Divinity’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes
Playing: Now at Los Feliz 3
