Review 715: Annihilation

 

Alex Garland's Annihilation is fascinating, thought-provoking, beautful  It's a science fiction film that takes the genre and turns into a playground where he can play with big ideas, be philosophical and ask  and be adventurous and scary.

Based on the novel Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer; When her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) vanishes during a secret mission, biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) leads a group of scientists, phychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), geomorphologist Cassie "Cass" Shepherd (Tuva Novotny), paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez) and physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) inside "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.

The primary themes at the centre of Annihilation are depression, grief and the human propensity for self-destruction, growth, life, death and grief. It is a science fiction film (in genre, not effect), yet the emotional core is the guilt these five women feel and how they deal with their self-destructive tendencies

Grief: Garland uses the five women of the expedition to explore greif: Shepherd represents denial, Anya represents anger, Josie represents bargening, Ventress represents depression while Lena represents acceptence.

Life: Throughout the film, Lena and the team The Shimmer makes new lifeforms by merging existing ones together

Death: 

Growth: The Shimmer is a prism, acting as both a mirror and amplifier, refracting and intensifying every piece of information it recives. Oddly enough, the aliens represent growth while the humans represent self-destruction. The idea of viral mutations and seeing things as being changed and being led by change

Alex Garland uses psychology, biology and geology to great effect to tell this story. One of the ways it uses psychology is in how it explores the theme of humans acting in self-destructive ways and our tendencies to harm our environment. All the members of the expedition are shown to have masochistic and malicious tendencies, tendencies that  Once the team enters "the shimmer'', they loose all sense of time and place, their compass' don't work, they don't know where they are, they don't know where they've been or where they're going. The only thing they can do is to keep going forward because it's the only possible way of getting out.  As Ventress says, “almost all of us self-destruct. It’s coded into us.”   His  of building suspense and  worldbuilding lend the film a great sense of pacing.

the cinamtography is beautiful and captures  the score by Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow is haunting and superbly disturbing, the visuals and special effects are stunning, The Shimmer itself has an almost hypnotic look to it featuring a dazzling riot of colours from deep purples, baby blues and bright yellows. The film portrays The Shimmer as like a cancer, unthinking cells that grow and spread. Lena and her team encounter many strange sights including colourful growths, plants with different species of flowers and which grow in human shapes. The production design is  the costumes are fantastic, bringing forward that rugged, military asthetic

You really can't go wrong with Natalie Portman as your leading lady and she brings a lot of grounded empathy to the role of Lena. Even though we follow Lena, she's the last participant to arrive

Jennifer Jason Leigh   Ventress has cancer and  She enters “The Shimmer” as some sort of suicide.

Gina Rodriguez is a standout playing Anya Thorensen. Rodriguez brought a warmth and humor to the role early in the film as well as capturing her struggle with the loss of her control and her body. Anya is an recovering addict and the quickest of the group to snap when they enter "The Shimmer".

Tessie Thompson has easily the most intriguing character with Josie Radek. 

Tuva Novotny is also very strong playing Cassie Shepherd. Cassie

Benedict Wong, Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno round out the cast with noteworthy performances.

Annihilation is not an easy film to discuss or dissect, it does not go for easy answers but that's ok. It's a film where different audiences will take away different meanings. Not every loose end was tied up or every question answered but in this case, that's not a bad thing, 4.5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.