Director: Alex Garland
Writers: Alex Garland, Jeff VanderMeer
Photography: Rob Hardy
Music: Geoff Barrow; Ben Salisbury; Crosby, Stills, and Nash
Editor: Barney Pilling
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Oscar Isaac, Tuva Novotny, Benedict Wong
I avoided seeing Annihilation for a little while after it came out because it seemed to be getting bad word of mouth on the social media I was seeing. I had the impression that, because it privileges five women over a few side-line male characters, the gripe was that it pandered to #MeToo sentiments. I know Jeff VanderMeer, author of the literary property of the same name, only as an anthologist, with his wife Ann, an impressive team—and I still know him only that way. I haven’t read Annihilation the novel, nor the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy. For his part, director and cowriter Alex Garland only read Annihilation, the only novel from the trilogy published at the time he started work on the movie. He kept it that way on purpose to stay with his own version of the story. That was another complaint—some aspects of Annihilation the movie are out of step with points in the larger trilogy.
Disregard this grumbling if you have not seen Annihilation. It is first-rate science fiction mixed with impressive bolts of horror and—VanderMeer’s declared favorite—the “weird” (he claims “The Other Side of the Mountain,” for example, as a major influence here). The visual effects team rises to the occasion—whether that’s production designer Mark Higby, VFX supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, VFX houses Double Negative and Milk, makeup artist Tristan Versluis, or whoever. In many ways their work rivals H.R. Giger’s on Alien. This is bewildering, consummate world-building. VanderMeer likes Annihilation the movie too, in spite of its departures from what he wrote. It has the cool, clinical style that Garland showed in Ex Machina, a more cerebral exercise. Annihilation is more often inclined to get you by the throat and make it hard for you to breathe. It has a great premise and story, spectacular visual effects, a never-ending palpable air of menace and dread, and one of the greatest monsters in all monster cinema. Who cares if it gets incoherent in its finale? So does 2001: A Space Odyssey. What else are you supposed to do with these great big SF concepts?
I avoided seeing Annihilation for a little while after it came out because it seemed to be getting bad word of mouth on the social media I was seeing. I had the impression that, because it privileges five women over a few side-line male characters, the gripe was that it pandered to #MeToo sentiments. I know Jeff VanderMeer, author of the literary property of the same name, only as an anthologist, with his wife Ann, an impressive team—and I still know him only that way. I haven’t read Annihilation the novel, nor the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy. For his part, director and cowriter Alex Garland only read Annihilation, the only novel from the trilogy published at the time he started work on the movie. He kept it that way on purpose to stay with his own version of the story. That was another complaint—some aspects of Annihilation the movie are out of step with points in the larger trilogy.
Disregard this grumbling if you have not seen Annihilation. It is first-rate science fiction mixed with impressive bolts of horror and—VanderMeer’s declared favorite—the “weird” (he claims “The Other Side of the Mountain,” for example, as a major influence here). The visual effects team rises to the occasion—whether that’s production designer Mark Higby, VFX supervisor Andrew Whitehurst, VFX houses Double Negative and Milk, makeup artist Tristan Versluis, or whoever. In many ways their work rivals H.R. Giger’s on Alien. This is bewildering, consummate world-building. VanderMeer likes Annihilation the movie too, in spite of its departures from what he wrote. It has the cool, clinical style that Garland showed in Ex Machina, a more cerebral exercise. Annihilation is more often inclined to get you by the throat and make it hard for you to breathe. It has a great premise and story, spectacular visual effects, a never-ending palpable air of menace and dread, and one of the greatest monsters in all monster cinema. Who cares if it gets incoherent in its finale? So does 2001: A Space Odyssey. What else are you supposed to do with these great big SF concepts?
Annihilation starts as a slow burn, setting a lot of things in motion at once: the guy who came out of “the Shimmer” and the team of women going in. One of them, Lena (Natalie Portman), is married to that guy, Kane (Oscar Isaac). He’s dying—he’s the first living thing to emerge from it. But in another thread, post-mission, Lena appears to be the second. And she’s looking pretty healthy, all things considered.
The Shimmer is the heart of this story. An unknown event has set it in motion—perhaps it is a first-wave attack by aliens from outer space, perhaps it is just a meteor strike with a strange and random biological payload. Perhaps something else. Ground zero is a lighthouse in the “Southern Reach” region from VanderMeer’s trilogy. It looks like New England (you know, lighthouses) but maybe it’s Florida. Split the difference. It’s North America. I think? Anyway, the Shimmer is an effect marked by a boundary that literally shimmers, and it is growing by increments daily. Research teams have been sent in to investigate but are routinely never heard from again. Shades of Stalker, sure. Shades of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Color Out of Space,” I don’t know, maybe. That would probably be VanderMeer if it’s there.
It is weird inside the Shimmer, naturally, as you would expect. But so weird. Such sights—nature seems to be out of control. Many scientific laws, more biological and perhaps chemical than physical, do not seem to apply there. The research team is blacking out, losing days at a time as they try to follow evidence left behind by previous missions. Their communications are knocked out. Their compasses no longer work. They only know about the lost time because of their scientific instruments, which may be unreliable. Hallucinations also seem possible, but they’re all seeing the same things, such as a giant gray or albino alligator which attacks them relentlessly.
Eventually the physicist on the team, Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), stands up an explanation for us: “The Shimmer is a prism, but it refracts everything. Not just light and radio waves. Animal DNA. Plant DNA. All DNA.” The team leader, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), dryly clarifies what it means, in terms of what’s been happening to them: “She’s talking about our DNA. She’s talking about us.” Good to know, perhaps, but at this point the knowledge itself avails little. I want to note that Jason Leigh is amazing in this movie. It’s possibly her greatest performance ever.
Then there is the bear that keeps harassing them. Well, they call it a bear, because it is big and ferocious like a bear and has some bear-like features, but to me it looked much more like a giant rat. And it can mimic the sound of a human voice crying for help. It is a devastating thing to witness, this sequence. This scene where the mission team confronts this thing is just amazing, absolutely petrifying, one of the best of its kind. Don’t let me oversell it. Time stands still. This is a monster for the ages and a main reason to see Annihilation at all.
The last section, the last quarter or so, is called “The Lighthouse.” It’s a point where you realize the movie has been making a lot of promises, so the expectation is this is where it makes good on them. And it works more or less on formal terms, driven in many ways by the marriage story of Lena and Kane. For me, the rat/bear encounter left me still in a daze, serving as more the actual natural climax of the picture. “The Lighthouse” is never particularly convincing to me. It’s a bit convenient to the drama at hand, as are the videos of Kane that Lena and the mission team keep finding laying around in the Shimmer (however haunting those videos may be). Strains of Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Helplessly Hoping” provide a heavy-handed family warmth vibe to the marriage. It works. But this is not a feel-good movie in any way and ending on a highly ambivalent feel-good note does not seem to me the way to go. Another aspect of Annihilation the movie was a fight among producers near release over versioning, which may account for the somewhat muddled finish. But like I said before, how are you supposed to end something this large and mind-blowing anyway? Roll credits, that’s all. Don’t miss it.
Top 20 of 2018
1. Annihilation
2. Free Solo
3. Climax
4. Shoplifters
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
7. Venom
8. Burning
9. Hereditary
10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
11. Unsane
12. Eighth Grade
13. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
14. Roma
15. Wild Wild Country
16. If Beale Street Could Talk
17. Isle of Dogs
18. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
19. Sorry to Bother You
20. Black Panther
Other write-ups: Bohemian Rhapsody, Cold War, Leave No Trace, RBG, Ready Player One, Searching, A Star Is Born, Studio 54, Suspiria, They Shall Not Grow Old, Widows, Wildlife
The Shimmer is the heart of this story. An unknown event has set it in motion—perhaps it is a first-wave attack by aliens from outer space, perhaps it is just a meteor strike with a strange and random biological payload. Perhaps something else. Ground zero is a lighthouse in the “Southern Reach” region from VanderMeer’s trilogy. It looks like New England (you know, lighthouses) but maybe it’s Florida. Split the difference. It’s North America. I think? Anyway, the Shimmer is an effect marked by a boundary that literally shimmers, and it is growing by increments daily. Research teams have been sent in to investigate but are routinely never heard from again. Shades of Stalker, sure. Shades of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Color Out of Space,” I don’t know, maybe. That would probably be VanderMeer if it’s there.
It is weird inside the Shimmer, naturally, as you would expect. But so weird. Such sights—nature seems to be out of control. Many scientific laws, more biological and perhaps chemical than physical, do not seem to apply there. The research team is blacking out, losing days at a time as they try to follow evidence left behind by previous missions. Their communications are knocked out. Their compasses no longer work. They only know about the lost time because of their scientific instruments, which may be unreliable. Hallucinations also seem possible, but they’re all seeing the same things, such as a giant gray or albino alligator which attacks them relentlessly.
Eventually the physicist on the team, Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), stands up an explanation for us: “The Shimmer is a prism, but it refracts everything. Not just light and radio waves. Animal DNA. Plant DNA. All DNA.” The team leader, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), dryly clarifies what it means, in terms of what’s been happening to them: “She’s talking about our DNA. She’s talking about us.” Good to know, perhaps, but at this point the knowledge itself avails little. I want to note that Jason Leigh is amazing in this movie. It’s possibly her greatest performance ever.
Then there is the bear that keeps harassing them. Well, they call it a bear, because it is big and ferocious like a bear and has some bear-like features, but to me it looked much more like a giant rat. And it can mimic the sound of a human voice crying for help. It is a devastating thing to witness, this sequence. This scene where the mission team confronts this thing is just amazing, absolutely petrifying, one of the best of its kind. Don’t let me oversell it. Time stands still. This is a monster for the ages and a main reason to see Annihilation at all.
The last section, the last quarter or so, is called “The Lighthouse.” It’s a point where you realize the movie has been making a lot of promises, so the expectation is this is where it makes good on them. And it works more or less on formal terms, driven in many ways by the marriage story of Lena and Kane. For me, the rat/bear encounter left me still in a daze, serving as more the actual natural climax of the picture. “The Lighthouse” is never particularly convincing to me. It’s a bit convenient to the drama at hand, as are the videos of Kane that Lena and the mission team keep finding laying around in the Shimmer (however haunting those videos may be). Strains of Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Helplessly Hoping” provide a heavy-handed family warmth vibe to the marriage. It works. But this is not a feel-good movie in any way and ending on a highly ambivalent feel-good note does not seem to me the way to go. Another aspect of Annihilation the movie was a fight among producers near release over versioning, which may account for the somewhat muddled finish. But like I said before, how are you supposed to end something this large and mind-blowing anyway? Roll credits, that’s all. Don’t miss it.
Top 20 of 2018
1. Annihilation
2. Free Solo
3. Climax
4. Shoplifters
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
7. Venom
8. Burning
9. Hereditary
10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
11. Unsane
12. Eighth Grade
13. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
14. Roma
15. Wild Wild Country
16. If Beale Street Could Talk
17. Isle of Dogs
18. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum
19. Sorry to Bother You
20. Black Panther
Other write-ups: Bohemian Rhapsody, Cold War, Leave No Trace, RBG, Ready Player One, Searching, A Star Is Born, Studio 54, Suspiria, They Shall Not Grow Old, Widows, Wildlife
I loved the cast. You make me think I should watch it again ... Best of 2018!
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