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The film opens with a fiery, asteroid-like body striking a lighthouse somewhere on the Gulf Coast, leaving not destruction and calamity in its wake, only a prismatic, oily aura. (Right then and there, Annihilation announces itself as less of an explosion movie and more of an unexplainably unsettling oily aura movie.)
- Vulture review
Five female scientists venture into the weird bubble; only one returns. What's inside is both beautiful and horrific; they and everything inside are changed in beautiful and horrifying ways.
"Take a dangerous trip into an unknown place surrounded by mystery, from which few or none have ever returned" is one of my favorite tropes. Over-explaining is the death of it. Frederik Pohl's Gateway, in which people set out in abandoned alien spaceships for unknown destinations, hoping to get rich but mostly dying or never coming back, was throughly satisfying because it explored the mystery without ever solving it. The sequels explained everything and were terrible. Annihilation, very satisfyingly, delves into the mystery without dissipating it.
I think today is the last day it's in theaters in the US. I saw it last night because it sounded like the sort of movie you should see on the big screen if you want to see it, and that was a good choice. I hadn't intended to see it as I didn't like the preview and thought it was more of a standard horror movie than it is; consequently, I read a lot of spoilers that then convinced me to see it. Knowing a lot of what happened didn't ruin it for me, nor did it really prepare me, as it's not so much about what happens as how it happens and what it's like to watch it unfold.
Annihilation is a science fiction/horror movie loosely based on a book series I haven't read because it's by Jeff Vandermeer, whose prose style bugs me. Apparently the director, Alex Garland, read the first book and then made the movie years later without re-reading it, based on his recollections. Based on seeing the movie, this sounds extremely plausible. I don't mean that as an insult. It feels like a dream recalled.
If you're trying to decide if you want to see it based on how scary/gross it is, it has some very scary moments, some very gory moments, a lot of body horror and disturbing imagery, and implications ranging from unsettling to nightmarish. It does not have jump scares. It also has a lot of very beautiful imagery (much of it also unsettling/creepy) and a lot of sense of wonder. It's mostly slow and meditative and about exploring a strange new world.
I knew there was some sort of time dilation involved, but I was not expecting that the very first scene after they passed through the Shimmer would be them waking up and realizing that they'd already been there for days and had no recollection of any of it. That very effectively set up a sense of disorientation which continued for the entire rest of the thing.
When Josie becomes a plant person, we never see the plants on her body growing. There's just more every time it cuts back to her. That made the scene so much weirder and more surreal than the other option. For one thing, the first time or two, I wondered if there really were more than the last time, or if I was misremembering or just seeing a different angle. Then, when it's clear that there really are more, the way it's cut seems like there's more because there was a time lapse rather than that they're growing super-fast. But there can't be a time lapse, because it's all happening during a normal-speed, real-time conversation, and then a normal-speed, real-time pursuit.
Or is any of it really real-time? We already know there's time dilation. Was that entire sequence taking place over a period of weeks or more, without the characters realizing? That would explain why Josie seemed to transform so quickly at the end. Maybe a week passed between when she reached the clearing with the other plant-people, and when Lena entered it and couldn't tell which one she was.
That screaming bear was the most horrific part of the entire movie for me, and the bit where Josie suggests that the screams weren't just mimicking, but a living part of Sheppard wins the prize for horrifying implications.
I don't think the movie needed the scenes of Lena being interrogated. They didn't add anything.
So, the end. The scene where Lena walks on the beach among the crystal trees was incredibly beautiful. I also liked the skeletons, which look half like a ritual arrangement and half like they'd grown there. And Dr. Ventress's death/dissolution was beautiful and awful and right: she thought she'd be annihilated, and she was: unlike everyone else, she left nothing behind, not a body, not a voice, not a plant, just essential particles stripped of their identity, from which something else could grow. She divides into a million cells, like the cancer cells that were killing her.
I probably don't even need to mention the womb/birth imagery of the hole and the tunnel and the black chamber, but I will mention that I liked how the stark whiteness of the lighthouse was reminiscent of the hospitals where we're born, where our cancer gets treated, and where we die.
Was that Original!Lena but with the Shimmer now within her? Or was the last narrative we saw the Doppelganger's invention, and this is Doppelgänger!Lena? I don't like that idea, mostly because if so, then it casts retroactive doubt over the entire narrative of what happened in the Shimmer. But that would explain why the Doppelgänger stopped mirroring Lena at the end - in this case, she never did, but she survived the fire while Original!Lena couldn't.
On the other hand, the Kane Doppelgänger had clearly also stopped mirroring his movements before his death. In that case, what makes them stop? Is there some sort of differentiation point, where they become an independent version of the original? Kane told his to go back to Lena, and it did; Lena told hers to die, and it did.
I really wanted Lena to reply to Kane's "Are you Lena?" with "I don't know."
- Vulture review
Five female scientists venture into the weird bubble; only one returns. What's inside is both beautiful and horrific; they and everything inside are changed in beautiful and horrifying ways.
"Take a dangerous trip into an unknown place surrounded by mystery, from which few or none have ever returned" is one of my favorite tropes. Over-explaining is the death of it. Frederik Pohl's Gateway, in which people set out in abandoned alien spaceships for unknown destinations, hoping to get rich but mostly dying or never coming back, was throughly satisfying because it explored the mystery without ever solving it. The sequels explained everything and were terrible. Annihilation, very satisfyingly, delves into the mystery without dissipating it.
I think today is the last day it's in theaters in the US. I saw it last night because it sounded like the sort of movie you should see on the big screen if you want to see it, and that was a good choice. I hadn't intended to see it as I didn't like the preview and thought it was more of a standard horror movie than it is; consequently, I read a lot of spoilers that then convinced me to see it. Knowing a lot of what happened didn't ruin it for me, nor did it really prepare me, as it's not so much about what happens as how it happens and what it's like to watch it unfold.
Annihilation is a science fiction/horror movie loosely based on a book series I haven't read because it's by Jeff Vandermeer, whose prose style bugs me. Apparently the director, Alex Garland, read the first book and then made the movie years later without re-reading it, based on his recollections. Based on seeing the movie, this sounds extremely plausible. I don't mean that as an insult. It feels like a dream recalled.
If you're trying to decide if you want to see it based on how scary/gross it is, it has some very scary moments, some very gory moments, a lot of body horror and disturbing imagery, and implications ranging from unsettling to nightmarish. It does not have jump scares. It also has a lot of very beautiful imagery (much of it also unsettling/creepy) and a lot of sense of wonder. It's mostly slow and meditative and about exploring a strange new world.
I knew there was some sort of time dilation involved, but I was not expecting that the very first scene after they passed through the Shimmer would be them waking up and realizing that they'd already been there for days and had no recollection of any of it. That very effectively set up a sense of disorientation which continued for the entire rest of the thing.
When Josie becomes a plant person, we never see the plants on her body growing. There's just more every time it cuts back to her. That made the scene so much weirder and more surreal than the other option. For one thing, the first time or two, I wondered if there really were more than the last time, or if I was misremembering or just seeing a different angle. Then, when it's clear that there really are more, the way it's cut seems like there's more because there was a time lapse rather than that they're growing super-fast. But there can't be a time lapse, because it's all happening during a normal-speed, real-time conversation, and then a normal-speed, real-time pursuit.
Or is any of it really real-time? We already know there's time dilation. Was that entire sequence taking place over a period of weeks or more, without the characters realizing? That would explain why Josie seemed to transform so quickly at the end. Maybe a week passed between when she reached the clearing with the other plant-people, and when Lena entered it and couldn't tell which one she was.
That screaming bear was the most horrific part of the entire movie for me, and the bit where Josie suggests that the screams weren't just mimicking, but a living part of Sheppard wins the prize for horrifying implications.
I don't think the movie needed the scenes of Lena being interrogated. They didn't add anything.
So, the end. The scene where Lena walks on the beach among the crystal trees was incredibly beautiful. I also liked the skeletons, which look half like a ritual arrangement and half like they'd grown there. And Dr. Ventress's death/dissolution was beautiful and awful and right: she thought she'd be annihilated, and she was: unlike everyone else, she left nothing behind, not a body, not a voice, not a plant, just essential particles stripped of their identity, from which something else could grow. She divides into a million cells, like the cancer cells that were killing her.
I probably don't even need to mention the womb/birth imagery of the hole and the tunnel and the black chamber, but I will mention that I liked how the stark whiteness of the lighthouse was reminiscent of the hospitals where we're born, where our cancer gets treated, and where we die.
Was that Original!Lena but with the Shimmer now within her? Or was the last narrative we saw the Doppelganger's invention, and this is Doppelgänger!Lena? I don't like that idea, mostly because if so, then it casts retroactive doubt over the entire narrative of what happened in the Shimmer. But that would explain why the Doppelgänger stopped mirroring Lena at the end - in this case, she never did, but she survived the fire while Original!Lena couldn't.
On the other hand, the Kane Doppelgänger had clearly also stopped mirroring his movements before his death. In that case, what makes them stop? Is there some sort of differentiation point, where they become an independent version of the original? Kane told his to go back to Lena, and it did; Lena told hers to die, and it did.
I really wanted Lena to reply to Kane's "Are you Lena?" with "I don't know."
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I really love the idea of a category called unsettling oily aura movies. I can just see it in my Netflix recommendations.
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I really love this movie, and I hope it's doing okay despite massive studio fuckery-- the studio wanted a man in the party, and wanted Lena to be less abrasive, and wanted a less ambiguous ending, and when Garland refused to do any of that they dumped the film into a fairly limited release and have been hoping it will all go away. It seems to be repeatedly selling out or nearly so at the theatre near my house, which gives me hope, because I really want the box office to reward him for sticking to his principles.
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The bear scene was incredibly, deeply upsetting for me and my particular issues, but I still came out of the movie telling everyone to go see it. I meant to write about it, but never did, so I'm glad you mentioned it here.
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But maybe part of that was because the tone and flashbacks and women scientists investigating alien stuffs reminded me a lot of Arrival, which I loved, and this suffered in comparison.
And part of it was I was distracted by wanting at least *some* acknowledgement that they'd tried methods of investigation that didn't involve sending more and more people into the place from which people don't return. The bit where they wake up and realise they've been there for days explains why a "Go in for five minutes and come straight out" approach would fail. But what about a "Go in tied to a giant rope and after five minutes be dragged out" approach? (or ditto but with camera). At least have an off-handed mention that "Oh yeah we tried that, the rope broke/the footage was scrambled/whatever".
I did love that it very was casually all women, even though the genre demanded they were then all going to die.
The interrogation frame worked for me; her vagueness responding to their questions mirrored her husband's vagueness responding to hers. I could have done with less of the flashbacks from before his return; I especially really didn't see what her affair added to the story.
I'm pretty sure we ended up with Shimmer!Kane and Original!Lena. This is based on the respective behaviour of the hand grenades. Kane's grenade treated him the way grenades typically treat humans, but Lena's grenade treated her and the other Shimmer!life around her like a witch getting soapy water thrown all over her.
I also thought she should have replied to "Are you Lena?" with "I don't know."