Reviews
‘Divinity’ Sundance Review – A Stunningly Original, Weird-as-Hell Sci-fi Trip
Out of all the programming categories at Sundance, it’s NEXT that proves to be the most divisive. Saved for “pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling,” it’s essentially the home of arthouse cinema. So it should come as no surprise that Eddie Alcazar‘s weird-as-hell Divinity, which just had its world premiere at the festival, falls right into that category.
Set in an alternate universe (or a near future?), Divinity sees scientist Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula, Quantum Leap) dedicate his life to the quest for immortality, slowly creating the building blocks of a groundbreaking serum named Divinity. Years later, his son Jaxxon Pierce (Stephen Dorff, Blade) now controls and manufactures the drug, resulting in a hedonistic planet that has been left 97% infertile, but immortal. Two alien brothers (Moises Arias and Jason Genao) arrive with a plan to abduct the mogul, only to be surprised by the sudden arrival of a sex worker named Nikita (Karrueche Tran, TNT’s Claws), who complicates their plans. Meanwhile, in another universe (or planet?) a female race led by Ziva (Bella Thorne, The Babysitter films) aims to undo the destruction caused by Divinity.
Divinity is fucking weird. There’s no way around it. Though it has a more linear narrative than your typical experimental film, its black-and-white, 16mm-shot assault on the senses is bound to divide viewers. Writer/director Eddie Alcazar, returning to the screen for the first time since 2018’s Perfect, gives us a unique vision that doesn’t offer much handholding for viewers. It’s best to just sit back and enjoy(?) the ride.
Though it’s aesthetically reminiscent of the lo-fi production of sci-fi television shows from the ’60s, the themes that Divinity grapples with apply to our modern world. Keying into society’s penchant for selfishness and self-preservation, especially in these post-pandemic times, Alcazar has more on his mind than a silly little sci-fi adventure.
Dorff may get top billing, but he does end up buried under a great deal of makeup for most of the film’s runtime, so the emotional core falls on Tran, Arias and Genao. Tran, especially, gives a mesmerizing and ethereal performance. It is through Nikita that the alien siblings gain a semblance of humanity, learning to understand what it means to be human and the detrimental effects Divinity has had on the race.
The worldbuilding is exquisite, so it’s no wonder that an industry titan like Steven Soderbergh opted to produce the film. Divinity is a vibe, but what the film lacks in commercial appeal it more than makes up for in a seemingly unending supply of creativity. Makeup effects on a continuously transforming Dorff impress, and a climactic battle filmed in stop motion dazzles. Jacob Flack and Mark A. Mangini‘s sound design is impeccable, adding an even more ominous layer to the proceedings.
As abstract as Divinity can be, it sometimes doesn’t trust its audience to fully understand what it’s trying to say, with Nikita even vocalizing the film’s central message about midway through the film. It offers little handholding for viewers, but when it does it pulls you out of the film. These moments are few and far between, but because of that it makes the moments that they do occur feel even more jarring.
Expect Divinity to perplex more viewers than it doesn’t (cries of “pretentious bullshit” will be inevitable), but for those that can appreciate the sheer ambition of the film’s scope, there’s a treat to be found within. Immortality is a constant talking point in the film, but what does that really mean? Is it merely that one body lives forever? Or is it something more than that? For those willing to meet Divinity halfway, they may find the answer.
Divinity had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and is currently seeking a distributor.
There’s a layer of the mythic in everything Cynthia Pelayo writes, whether she’s charting the little-known history of her home city of Chicago or digging deep into the pool of shared stories that’s served humanity since ancient times. Regardless of subject matter or narrative, Pelayo reads like a writer constantly in search of the threads of legend and myth that bind us all together and keep us awake at night.
It Came From Neverland, Pelayo’s latest novel, takes that search and applies it to one of the most famous children’s stories ever conceived, J.M. Barrie’s beloved and oft-adapted tale of the Boy Who Never Grew Up. But this is not just a Peter Pan retelling, or a Peter Pan meta-sequel. Through gorgeous prose, finely drawn characters, and an iron grip on the themes that drive the story, Pelayo crafts It Came From Neverland into one of the year’s must-read genre novels, both a horrifying spin on Peter Pan and a luminous dark fantasy about the search for salvation in a cold, brutal world.
In Pelayo’s version of events, Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael really did travel to Neverland when they were children, drawn there by a charismatic and irresistible figure called Peter Pan. But this Neverland is far from the Disney version, and after fighting to survive in that ageless place, the children made their way home and shut Peter Pan out of their lives, refusing to so much as utter his name, lest he find them again.
Flash forward to 1914, where Wendy’s working as a schoolteacher at Marigold House, a London orphanage growing increasingly crowded amid the outbreak of World War I. By day, she teaches and volunteers at a local hospital, reading to the war wounded, and by night, she remembers to check every window latch and keep an eye on every shadow. But lately those shadows seem to behave strangely again. Crows caw all around her. And worst of all, children are disappearing again. Peter Pan is back, and faced with memories of how no one believed her the first time, Wendy prepares to face him one more time.
This is a remarkably well-suited atmosphere for moments of classic, chill-inducing terror, and Pelayo wastes no time weaving a world in which every bird call, every stray thought from the mouth of a child, could be evidence that this monstrous Peter Pan is near. Wendy lives a haunted existence, and as the chaos of war grips London, old fears grip her while new ones fight for position. If you come to this novel looking for something like Stephen King’s IT by way of J.M. Barrie, you’re going to get it, through flashbacks and dark lore and wonderfully well-timed scares, but Pelayo’s not done.
This version of Wendy Darling, through whom we see most of the narrative, cares for children in adulthood because she did not receive the care she needed herself as a child in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. She considers it her duty to listen to them, to protect them, to understand them in a world that still views them not as human beings, but as potential locked up in tiny bodies.
Setting the book in 1914, when young men across Europe were signing up to go and die in a war they didn’t quite understand, underscores this beautifully. Children are grist for the mill in the world of It Came From Neverland, their eager spirits waiting to be crushed by a machine of war and empire and capitalism that will not relent even if an armistice eventually arrives. It’s a wider, more existential layer of horror than the storybook monster, which gets us to open the book in the first place, but the real brilliance at work here is how Pelayo ties it all together.
At the core of all of this, the beating, icy heart of It Came From Neverland‘s horror and its search for meaning amid the narratives of war, children’s fiction, collective memory, and more, Pelayo is most interested in what it really means to never grow up. It means retaining a sense of play, yes, but it also means a refusal to move on, to embrace not just the responsibilities of aging, but the moral burdens of it.
Peter Pan is a monster not because he likes to play, but because he does not consider consequences, mortality, or even the needs and desires of others. The same is true of the leaders of Europe sending young men off to die in a war, and the same is true of leaders now, playing dice with human lives amid the rise and fall of the stock market. To never grow up is to lose something essential about being human, and Pelayo depicts that loss as both existentially terrifying and heartbreaking. That terror and heartbreak drive the novel, but Wendy’s efforts to escape that terror and to mend her broken heart make it fly.
It Came From Neverland is available June 9 wherever books are sold.
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