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| Images courtesy of Utopia |
New Mexico based writer-producer-director and former
videogame developer Eddie Alcazar though still operating on the underground
circuit has made his presence known in the independent film world. The founder of videogame 3D design company
Alcazar Entertainment which also served as the platform for many television
commercials, Alcazar eventually partnered with HBO and 50 Cent for the short
boxing documentary Tapia before eventually pairing up with Flying Lotus
on the 16mm short film FUCKKKYOUUU and going on to produce Flying Lotus’
directorial debut film Kuso.
Along the way Alcazar soon crossed paths with Steven Soderbergh who
produced his first feature film Perfect before then landing a short film
produced by Darren Aronofsky starring Bill Duke called The Vandal. Having formed a sizable body of feature and
short film work, usually filmed in rough grainy black-and-white with a uniquely
futurist aesthetic, it was only a matter of time before Alcazar and Soderbergh
would unite once again.
In their newest collaboration Divinity which began
sometime in 2021, Alcazar introduces an unrated, out of the gate hyperkinetic hypersexual
16mm science-fiction horror shocker that proves to be the most hallucinatory
stroboscopic freakout of its ilk since Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool released
at the beginning of the year. A purely
audiovisual experimental technically proficient sensory experience where the
plotline is secondary to the technique, this unscripted foray into psychedelic
underground filmmaking is the closest thing to a midnight movie ala Pi, Eraserhead,
Forbidden Zone and the aforementioned Kuso our year in film has
seen. Made in an era where sex and
nudity is increasingly frowned upon in American film media, Divinity from
start to finish explodes with a kind of testicular fortitude replete with
quasi-gynecological imagery opening the title credits before later scenes
hammer home the picture’s complete absence of fucks to give.
Off in the near distant future in a sterilized
post-apocalyptic landscape, benevolent scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula
from Quantum Leap) develops an immortality serum of sorts called Divinity. However, the groundbreaking discovery is perverted
by Sterling’s son Jaxxon (Stephen Dorff) into a multimillion-dollar enterprise
where the serum is manufactured and sold for a price. It is then revealed the anti-aging serum
requires the use of human fetuses for developmental purposes which bodes poorly
for a populace already largely infertile.
Unbeknownst to Jaxxon, Star twins (Moises Arias and Jason Genoa) crash
land to Earth to ransack Jaxxon’s home and stop him from proceeding with his Divinity
serum rollout. Giving him a taste of
his own medicine, the Star twins pump Jaxxon full of the serum which transforms
him into a deformed mutant that looks like a cross between The Incredible
Hulk from Ken Russell’s Altered States, all overplayed to
overwhelming excessive effect by Dorff buried under makeup.
A bit like a Chris Cunningham music video with emphasis on body
builders and musculature, the physicality of the human body engaged in sex or
fighting including but not limited to the use of a new cinematographic
technique of stop-motion animation editing called the Metascope, Divinity whether
it works or not is firing on each and every conceivable cylinder. Made on a $15K microbudget and co-starring
Bella Thorne as a cult leader in a kind of THX:1138 all-white sterilized
environment and Karreuch Tran as a nubile sex kitten whose world saving
abilities are thwarted by bedroom trysts with the Star twins, it begins as an
instacult freakout replete with Commodore 64 inspired opening and closing credits
scenes and functions like a cinematic drug taking you the viewer on a mad trip
of the midnight movie kind.
Visually this is a phantasmagorical photochemical injection
into the veins leading to the brain, lensed gorgeously in high-contrast grain by
Danny Hiele and scored with aural explosiveness by Cypress Hill member DJ Muggs
and Dean Hurley. From start to finish,
you feel as though you’re being plugged into The Matrix with the daylight
hallucinations not ceasing until the plug is withdrawn from the back of our
heads. Performances are mostly secondary
to the real star sitting behind the camera Eddie Alcazar and his team of
editors Steve Former, Kevin Greutert and Todd Crites who whip up a frenzied
explosion of images that fly by faster than the eyes can perceive. Akin to a roller coaster despite not
completely understanding the how and why behind the imagery, Divinity on
a tight budget achieves a genuine kind of otherworldliness with transfixing
vistas that only intensify in their stroboscopic nature as the film progresses.
Not intended for everyone with its freakish sights and
sounds, sexual transgressions and bizarre science-fiction violence, Divinity
released by Utopia has more or less crept into theaters with little to no
press release outside of advertisements on Facebook feeds. Currently in limited theatrical release in a
handful of theaters, I can confirm having seen it at present it is probably the
film I’m the most interested in seeing on the silver screen again. Wild with almost reckless abandon not seen in
breakneck speed sci-fi infused actioners ala Crank: High Voltage by way
of Pi or Mandy, Divinity is a real gold toothed exercise
in pure experimental provocation. Though
likely to die a quiet death in empty theaters sadly (theater was desolate when
I went), this is unquestionably the wildest thing you can buy a ticket for at
the movies right now! Sure to become a
cult classic in the ensuing years of midnight movie revivals. In the words of Raoul Duke, “buy the ticket,
take the ride!”.
--Andrew Kotwicki
