Annihilation

2018 sci-fi movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Natalie Portman and some new friends venture into a mysterious bubble and come out with flowers coming out their pores.

I walked into this expecting a Predator clone but with a group of females. That's what the trailer convinced me this would be. To be honest, I wasn't interested in that at all, but I'm seeing pretty much everything these days, and I liked the look of that giant bubble. Annihilation thankfully has almost nothing in common with Predator. It's much more sophisticated, more artistic, more emotional, and more capable of turning your mind inside out. It's layered, and I think even the individuals layers might have layers.

This is the kind of film that doesn't really seem to say much with conviction, but it says a variety of things depending on what life experiences you bring into the thing. I've seen various theories, not really anything that matches exactly what I think it's about. Is this a look at depression? How people handle individual trauma? Relationships, specifically the struggle with two people becoming one person and unnatural monogamy? Is it about our destructive natures as human beings, the idea that that which doesn't kill us keeps persisting and tries to kill us again and again if we invite it to do so? That destructive nature colliding so profoundly with human's survival instincts? Is it about science, evolution, or God's habit of creating the unnatural?

Here's a question: Why an all-female team? Why previous all-male teams? For me, that makes this seem like it has more to do with relationships than anything else. That along with the fact that Natalie Portman's character is the protagonist and that every flashback we get has to do with her marital relationship.

Aesthetically, this is something else. The creatures don't always look real, but if there's going to be some CGI that's off, it can be forgiven with something so ambitious and unique. It's easier to excuse obvious CGI when they're creating something that doesn't exist as opposed to, say, just an elephant or rhinoceros. Bart the Bear wasn't available for this, and let's face it, I'm not sure he could have pulled this off anyway. Lots of imagery in this just stuns, things I've never seen before and shots that had my eyes bouncing all over the screen to pick up every little detail. The bubbly shimmer is something I could look at for hours, mostly because I don't have a lot to do with my time, and I liked how there always seemed to be a visual reminder that they were in this alien bubble thing in most of the shots of the second half of the movie. The foliage and flowers? The shocking human remains they come across? The trippy climax that I won't say anything else about because I want you to experience it for yourself? The world building is exceptional here.

The experience is a visceral one. Not-Bart-the-Bear is absolutely terrifying, there's at least one jump scare that really will make you jump, and I could sense collective breath-holding and gasps around me during the ending of this movie. The disjointed storytelling might frustrate some viewers, but there are tricks up the sleeve, and I thought the narrative was enhanced by the flashbacks and flash forwards. The movie tingles your nerves and raises the hairs on the back of your neck, but it also keeps your mind moving long after the movie's over.

I also thought the score was interesting. I kept waiting to hear that three-note theme that I kept hearing from the trailer, and it shows up at a time when it couldn't have more of an impact. There's also some seemingly out-of-place folk guitar music that confused me at first but later really seemed to humanize the whole thing, make it all a little less cold.

Great closing credits for this one as it made me feel like I was inside a defective kaleidoscope.

It's a shame that this isn't making much money. This is the kind of original film-making that should be celebrated, and it proves that Alex Garland is a force when it comes to these brainy sci-fi movies.