Annihilation is one of those movies that I’m pretty sure will be more loved as time goes on. The best example I can think of is 2001: A Space Odyssey (high praise, I know, but it’s true!). That movie at the time was widely panned because no one was ready to think that heavily about a movie, but as time went on, people realized just how great that film is. Annihilation, Alex Garland’s follow up to Ex Machina, is better than that film and as challenging and interesting a sci-fi film as 2016’s best film: Arrival, and will leave you trapped in thought a good while after you leave the theater.
Lena (Natalie Portman) and Kane (Oscar Isaac) are a couple in love with each other, after meeting in the military. Lena leaves and becomes a biologist, but Kane stays. One day, after a murky description of his next assignment, Kane disappears for a year and suddenly reemerges, but severely changed. Lena, desperate to save him, joins a group consisting of Kane’s Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Anya (Gina Rodriguez), Cass (Tuva Novotny), and Josie (Tessa Thompson) to enter the Shimmer: a growing, strange phenomenon that no one, except Kane, has exited after they entered.
So, great sci-fi tips toward one of two sides: it’s either borderline horror, or borderline action movie at some point. Annihilation aims for borderline horror elements. The movie disorients and scares right from the get go, sort of jumping forward and back in time. We get some distorted images here, a drip of blood into a clear glass of water there, and a chilly Dr. Ventress puts the audience on edge as the team enters the Shimmer. Once inside, Garland keeps dropping hints that as beautiful as the place can be, there might be lots of barriers for the group to reach their destination. The creature design in Annihilation is among the better sci-fi creations, equally amazing and menacing. There’s a scene at a swamp with one terrifying thing that will take the uneasiness to dread, leading to a scene about an hourish into the movie, in a house, with as disturbing and scary a scene I’d witnessed in a long time. Garland uses lots of slow moving quiet scenes to amplify the tension of what is going on, and get us paranoid as we go deeper and deeper to get to the lighthouse.
While Garland is scaring the hell out of you, you’re also trying to figure out what the hell is actually going on. Since you know that if you go into the Shimmer you’re probably not coming out, the people going in probably are content never coming back, so that’s gonna factor in. There’s legit science discussions of refraction, mutation, and what actually the Shimmer is that keep popping around your head as well. Little pieces of information keep coming to you as you get closer and closer to the lighthouse. Once we see it come into frame, you know something is going to go down there. I won’t reveal anything, but suffice to say, that final 30 minutes is an exhausting, enthralling experience that never tells you exactly what is going on, but leaves you to figure it out yourself. That final 30 minutes, if you’re into Annihilation, will stay with you for hours as you try to process what you saw; I was at a birthday party heavily distracted cause I kept saying in my head, “Wait, what about the…and this person? But, then that…oh, I think, wait….WTF????” Very few sci-fi films can challenge the mind like that, and Annihilation boldly goes the heady route over studio branded over explanation with stellar results.
Annihilation is Alex Garland’s best movie of his continually promising and growing career. I really didn’t know who the guy was until Ex Machina, and I started looking him up. Never Let Me Go. Sunshine. Dredd. 28 Days Later. These movies, while not perfect films, are movies that exist a step above because they live around ideas and leave you thinking for a good while after you exit, a testament of how great a writer Garland is. He also wrote the novel The Beach, so thanks to him we got to see Leo DiCaprio fight a shark! Thanks dude!