Divinity

Sterling Pierce had a dream for the future of the planet, that it should live forever, limitless opportunity for achievement, for personal progress unfettered by limitations of time or aging, a goal he knew at his advanced age that he would not personally benefit from, his effort given for his children, sons Jaxxon and Rip and their generation, pushing back the ultimate boundary of death so there would always be a new tomorrow, another dawn.

Yet all progress comes at a cost, Divinity marketed and sold to the exclusive clientele who can afford it and Jaxxon living in his luxurious desert domain above the laboratory where it is synthesised, purified and bottled, but into this space have come two strange intruders, a pair of brothers who seek to preserve the fragile ecosystem of the future by holding him hostage and forcing concentrated doses of the wonder drug into his system.

Avant-garde in its monochrome moodiness and wilfully oblique in its abstract approach to storytelling and anything resembling clear explanations, Divinity is written and directed by Eddie Alcazar, starring Mob Land’s Stephen Dorff as Jaxxon Pierce with Moises Arias and Jason Genao as the two brothers, first seen emerging black-clad from illuminated portals in the earth before crawling across sand and rocks to their destination under the starry night.

A barrage of images mixing futuristic design and retro-advertising, of beautiful bodies pushed and toned to perfection, of hedonistic indulgence and excess, of mechanical and chemical interventions and adaptations filling the empty spaces of the soul, Divinity promises all but in its unadulterated form it is a poison, pushing Jaxxon past longevity and the promised peak of physical performance to monstrous metamorphosis.

Perhaps hoping to bring about an epiphany in the pharmaceutical industrialist, the arrival of sensual explorer Nikita (Karrueche Tran) is at first an interruption then an ongoing distraction as she entices the brothers to understand and indulge their human forms, becoming gluttons for sensation, while elsewhere another sect of perfect beings led by Ziva (Bella Thorne) seeks to preserve what they can, hoping to avert the crisis prompted by Divinity.

A melange of ideas and styles culminating in a Claymation confrontation between the opposing forces, the undeniably ambitious scope of Divinity borders on incomprehensible, the stunning locations and cinematography mesmerising and offering some compensation for what, between the celestial light shows of flowing energy and earthbound birthday party drug orgy, conveys no more meaning or emotion than a glossy but overlong pop video, John Wyndham’s having addressed the complexity of the issue comprehensively and with clarity in his classic Trouble with Lichen.

Divinity is available on Shudder now

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