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| Scene from Annihilation |
There is something that's immediately unnerving about director Alex Garland's Annihilation. It's not in the disorienting imagery that's to come, but in the way that Lena (Natalie Portman) seems to move through her story. It's like a collage full of mystery as she tries to understand why her boyfriend Kane (Oscar Isaac) has come back a deformed man, with the answers only lying in a chaotic void, known in the film as "The Shimmer." This isn't a film meant to answer the hard questions, but instead create one of the best big budget sci-fi films in years with a story that's thematically rich with moments that provoke the audience. Like The Shimmer itself, the answers aren't clear, and in some ways exist more as a moral quandary for each viewer to solve. It's a film that's more ambitious than Garland's Ex Machina, though maybe not as intellectually satisfying. Still, it's hard not to love a film that creates a world where even the small details feel different. For all of its faults, Annihilation is definitely a film that posits Garland as one of cinema's most promising world-builders. What is so alluring about The Shimmer? It's a giant bubble that slowly consumes the Earth, leaving behind only a transposed environment where nothing is the same. Those who come out alive, if at all, experience great physical changes that threaten to destroy the world. Still, science and humanity are obsessed with defeating this foe, or at least trying to understand why it's here. It's a fool's errand, and one that Lena takes on for answers of her own. Why did Kane come back in such a disheveled state? There must be answers. The issue with that is found in the irony that the only way to achieve this is to risk your life for answers. Is it worth it? Why not just wait a little longer and die like everyone else? It's really hard to pick,
For all of the slow build-up to The Shimmer, Garland delivers one of the more exciting universes that big budgeted sci-fi has been allowed to have. It's a world where plant DNA has changed greatly, creating strains of colorful and differing flowers on a single stem. The animals also have changed, possessing more adaptive features like extra teeth and disturbing hunting calls. Even the atmosphere that exists between the Earth and "sky" has a splashed rainbow effect, created from an atmosphere absorbing and changing everything below it. It's all rich with science mumbo-jumbo, but Garland's best attribute is the sense of danger that comes with this new world. The score echoes through the air as the most intimate and banal of conversations suddenly feel precious. The world could collapse around them, and the lack of awareness of what's to come only makes it worse.
By the powerful, shattering third act the film has taken on its own rhythm. It's hard not to when the film creates imagery that will haunt the viewer, or at least make them want to imagine a world outside the theater; one that looks normal and safe. It's a shame that foreign audiences won't get the chance to experience the chamber effect of seeing this in a theater, where it all echoes around them as the score lifts goosebumps on your skin. It's all so magnificent and creates something challenging, even adult, for a genre currently relegated to superhero mischief. To say that there's one distinctive answer would be a fool's errand. There's definitely subtext worthy of further exploration, maybe even another viewing, but it would be easy to feel satisfied by the experience of the film without liking the story. Its bare bones in a way, but Garland is more obsessed with the journey, and that may be seen as frustrating to some.
Annihilation is by no means a flawless movie and has as many issues as it does powerful imagery. It can captivate the audience with moments that are understood solely on a visceral level, in large part because Garland's direction slowly manipulates the viewer into this creepy reality. He has created a world more obsessed with detail and colors that prove the power of set design, even if that unfortunately comes at a cost. It may be a film that exists currently under the myth that it's a box office bomb, but it's relegated to spend itself as a cult film worthy of reissues and one night only screenings across the world. It's a film that warrants the big screen experience, and one can hope Garland is capable of delivering that again sometime in the future.
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