‘Divinity’ Review – Genre-Blending Cautionary Tale Fumbles Promising Premise

Genre-blending cautionary tales have been in vogue since the rise of works like Black Mirror, Love, Death + Robots, Electric Dreams… and so on, even portions of Guillermo del Toro’s recent anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities. Their themes are mostly one-note, showing how humanity has strayed from its well-intentioned path to use its technological tools for sinister purposes on an institutional or smaller societal scale.

Divinity is very much a story in the vein of the above series and is ultimately focused on examining at some greater length the implications of developments we only dream about. Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff) is a business mogul with a monopoly on the population within the substance known as Divine, a drug that literally provides the user with immortality in their current form.

Jaxxon inherits the company and serum from his father, Sterling (Scott Bakula), the original creator of the formula. Jaxxon lends the serum a new face and a new, sexy identity that aids in glossing over his wildly popular product’s largest caveat: taking the serum renders the body sterile and infertile. But in writer-director Eddie Alcazar’s nondescript distant future world, sex undergoes a revitalization once humanity has largely paid for its own selfish longevity. It’s everywhere, on everything, and yet continues to sell whatever name it’s appended to.

The advent of Jaxxon Sterling’s product attracts a pair of mysterious brothers, who hold him hostage and force-feed him concentrated doses of his own product. What was once a moderately woven allegory wears thin here, and as the film progresses to its end it disappears completely. Shot in a stylized manner on 16-millimeter film and in black and white, it already forces a juxtaposition of lofty aesthetics versus sobering reality in its argument for humankind’s impending doom by figures like Jaxxon Sterling (the credits in particular mention Elon Musk in its special thanks — make of that what you will).

The factor of criticism in Divinity never remains consistent, however. It seems to have its own driving goal behind everything we’re shown and told that morphs just as Jaxxon’s product ends up changing him, leading to a climax that feels like it may have been conceived for a much different version of the film. For everything it seems to be doing, it has the power to compel the senses. Yet by the finale, everything is revealed to have been propped up against a reductive argument that feels much too primitive and bull-headed to even have inspired such a meticulously crafted framing, sabotaging the entire reason for its inception. It’s a crushing, deflating maneuver that undermines any amount of goodwill it could collect in one fell swoop.

It comes as a major disappointment given how engaging the film’s performances are, and the influences it picks up from Slava Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky as well as how much it stylistically lifts from filmmakers like Panos Cosmatos — almost criminally so in the wake of Beyond the Black Rainbow. The majority of Divinity will no doubt have your undivided attention, but as it unfolds it sets itself on a destructive path that devolves into a primordial ooze once the credits roll.

Divinity is currently playing in select theaters in NY and LA courtesy of Utopia and Sumerian. The film will expand nationwide on November 3rd. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rchhmnIlbTc]