DIVINITY - Mark Reviews Movies

Divinity, Utopia

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023

Divinity tells what's essentially a straightforward science-fiction story about the ethics and perils of immorality. It does so, though, in such broad strokes and with so many inexplicably allegorical intentions that the movie is alternately simplistic and frustratingly impenetrable.

The setup is easy enough to understand. A scientist named Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) started to develop a serum that could prolong human life as long as a person kept up with regular doses of the formula. He failed, apparently, leaving his son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff) to pick up his father's work and perfect the formula, which he dubbed Divinity and which has become regularly consumed by the majority of people. How the latter is possible, considering that Jaxxon's manufacturing operation appears to be a single lab at a remote estate in the desert and the revelation of the inherently contradictory means of creating the stuff, is a question best left unasked, perhaps.

That's probably what writer/director Eddie Alcazar would suggest and prefer for a lot of the questions one might have about this tale. It revolves around Jaxxon, as he's preparing for a birthday party at his lavish home, has some energetic sex with an escort (played by Emily Willis), and ends up being held captive in his own home by a pair of brothers (played by Moises Arias and Jason Genao). They know how he makes Divinity and want him stop.

Complicating all of this is an abundance of details that definitely make the tale more mysterious, albeit in a way that cries out for even a modicum of explanation. The escort, for example, runs off naked into the desert, only to be rescued by a tribe of women, led by Ziva (Bella Thorne), who exist in some ethereal plane of existence and perceive a crisis being caused by Divinity.

There's probably an environmentalist message hidden in these sections of the story, although even that feels like a stretch, despite the movie's final shot more or less making that subtext into text. The scenes mostly feel like an excuse to put a lot of young women in skin-tight suits, as well as to show off one visual effects shot of some of them forming from nothing, into skeletons, and finally into people/beings/whatever.

Also, those hostage-taking brothers are either aliens, angels, or, if the credits are to be believed, the embodiments of stars, who crash to Earth with the sole intention of pumping Jaxxon full of so much of his serum that he transforms into a monster. If they don't seem to have much of a plan in mind (including a moment in which one of them hides Jaxxon from the randomly appearing and disappearing partygoers by putting a big piece of furniture in front of him), there is some deception leading to sex with another escort named Nikita (Karrueche Tran), a lot of the trio lounging around and indulging in food, and an awkward romance with one of the brothers that's clearly here solely so that final moment can exist.

Finally, there's Jaxxon's brother Rip (Michael O'Hearn), who, as his name suggests, is a hulking, muscular specimen of a man. He's very worried that his brother isn't answering his calls—but not enough so for him to stop taking Divinity, take a bath, angrily drive around in the desert, and show up late to the party. Surely, there's some metaphorical importance to the delay, as well as the story possessing two pairs of brothers, but like pretty much everything here, the filmmaker offers almost no guidance for any reasonable interpretation. The alternative, of course, is that it's just poor writing.

Alcazar's dialogue, which has the characters speaking in riddles and often in circles, offers little to no aid. The movie's visuals, shot in black-and-white, are occasionally striking but mostly muddy. That's especially true in the dark spaces of the manor and out in the nighttime desert, where a climactic battle unfolds in stop-motion animation, which might be the most creative thing here. Even it, though, plays out in a jarringly stereotypical way (A character learns martial arts by osmosis early on, and sure enough, it comes in handy eventually), and Alcazar puts a little too much trust in the models by intercutting the animation with live-action inserts of an actor who only looks vaguely like his clay counterpart.

It would be easy to forgive such budgetary restrictions if the movie's story or message overcame them. In Divinity, though, such elements are barely communicated in a comprehensible way.

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