2018’s Annihilation,
written and directed by Alex Garland.
Starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa
Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, Oscar Isaac, and Benedict Wong.
What is it about?
Annihilation stars
Natalie Portman as a Florida biologist who is coping with her soldier husband
(Oscar Isaac) going missing. Last seen on a mission exploring a mysterious large
alien bubble referred to as, The Shimmer, it grows in size every day and has
seen multiple groups of people go in to investigate- who never come back. Isaac
eventually does return, but seems… different. Portman is then recruited by a
mysterious woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who has Portman join her team of
scientists (Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny) to go and investigate
The Shimmer. With its diesel slick-like dome growing by the day, will the team
be able to find out what this mysterious phenomenon is- and protect themselves
from the unknown and each other?
Why is it worth seeing?
Writer/Director Alex Garland is no stranger to science
fiction. His last film, 2014’s Ex Machina,
was an exploration into the dystopian themes of artificial intelligence amongst
human beings, but as anyone can tell you from his other penned works (The Beach, 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go, Sunshine, Dredd), Garland is unafraid to explore a
wide diversity of ideas. His works are often as likely to indulge our more
primitive natures, as they are to engage with what makes us cerebral.
Fans of Garland will not be disappointed here, as Annihilation is equal parts thoughtful
exploration as to where human beings could be headed, and potent nightmare fuel.
Once witnessed, some of its creatures, put together by the random laws of
mutated Darwinian survival, could be difficult to get out of the collective
unconscious. They exist in a world that is all chaotic science, devoid of
feeling or morality.
Garland loads up on the symbolism, and the very refraction
of lights that we use to perceive our fragile genetic make up are highlighted
through shots of various prism-like screens. Just who are we when the laws of
nature change? However, there’s nothing symbolic about Portman’s resolve when
it comes down to fight or flight. She kicks ass and has to fight her greatest
battle of all by the film’s conclusion, where primitive assault weapons are
useless.
Another strength of Annihilation
is in resolving its characters’ fates. While not all of their conclusions are
pleasant whatsoever, many seem destined for a resolution based off of their
personality- which may be why many have been pointing out Annihilation’s similarities to Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 Stalker and 1972’s Solaris (also remade by Steven Soderbergh in 2002),
featuring stories about worlds that seem to respond to
its human visitors in customized ways.
With Annihilation, detractors will point out that Garland
continues to struggle to end his movies with the flourish that he begun them
with, that it is confusing and difficult to follow at times, and that its
ambiguity and lack of a clear antagonist make it as unlikable as its box office
is underwhelming. But that would be ignoring the point: similar to 2017’s Life,
the real antagonist could be us humans, the future missing link to a species
light years ahead of us. For that, you wish the movie had instead been titled,
Evolution.
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