Seated atop a water tower in downtown Manhattan, a lone gunman picks off pedestrians with a cheap rifle. When asked why he has committed this carnage, the gunman confesses “God told me to.” As more senseless slaughter spreads, a religious cop (Tony Lo Bianco) madly pursues the ghastly cause, only to find that a malevolent demigod holds sway from an infernal basement chamber. Director Cohen's deity is no model avatar, but a wan, long-haired half-breed birthed by an alien abductee. Anti to Cohen's Christ is the tormented detective: “All my life I felt so close to God. And it wasn't him after all.” The confrontation between these two divine aspirants is a thing to behold, brimming with brimstone, surplus genitalia, and holy dictums that can topple buildings. Out of the rubble of genre, Cohen conjures unsettling themes, strangely human even as they are occult. Startling in its iconoclasm, God Told Me To speaks of a new species of divinity that is not of this earth.