Annihilation is based on the book of the same name by Jeff VanderMere, and it concerns a strange occurrence that takes place after a meteor strikes the Earth (in a coastal region of Florida). The area immediately surrounding the meteor strike zone starts changing in a weird way. The very landscape is mutating in an indescribable manner, and this new ground is covered by a large bubble-like dome that the scientists investigating it refer to as the Shimmer. Natalie Portman plays Lena, a biology professor at Johns Hopkins, and a former Army soldier, who lost her husband in a covert operation a year prior. When her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), abruptly returns to their house without explanation, and then falls ill, a bewildered Lena calls an ambulance.
However, the ambulance carrying Kane to the hospital is diverted by a government SWAT team, and Lena awakens to find herself at Area X, the government research site set up on the border of the Shimmer. Driven to solve the mystery of what happened to her husband, Lena joins a special team that ventures into the Shimmer on foot to study what this strange anomaly really is. This investigative team is all female, led by the mysterious Doctor Ventress (the always great Jennifer Jason Leigh), who has an agenda of her own. Tessa Thompson, who played the hard-charging sidekick in Thor: Ragnarok, is completely unrecognizable here as the timid yet inquisitive Radek. Gina Rodriguez is also superb as the gruff Thorensen, and Tuva Novotny rounds out the main cast of investigators as the empathetic Sheppard.
Written and directed by Alex Garland, who gave us the extraordinary Ex Machina, Annihilation is a fantastic science fiction film that is more in the league of such mind-bending SF films as 2001, Phase IV, and Interstellar. It’s also more of a horror film, with nightmarish scenes of terror that still managed to get under the skin of this long-time horror buff. Yet there are also scenes of wonder and beauty that can only be really enjoyed on Blu-Ray (assuming you can’t see this in the theater--if you can, go for it). Garland doesn’t completely faithfully follow the first book in VanderMere’s trilogy, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, seeing how the characters in the book weren’t even given names (Portman’s character in the book was known only as The Biologist).
Garland not only gives the investigators names, but he ably fleshes out their characters, and these outstanding actresses run with it, creating extremely sympathetic people whom you care about, which in turn makes the film that much more suspenseful and riveting. The presence of Portman and Isaacs, two veterans of the cinematic Star Wars saga, was a pleasant reminder to me that not all great science fiction films need to be all ’pew-pew-pew’ with countless explosions. While there’s nothing wrong with space opera--there’s room for all kinds of storytelling in this genre--science fiction is really at its best when it’s making us consider questions about our very existence, about life itself. And ultimately that’s what Annihilation does so well--sending us on a mind-boggling trip that has us questioning the very nature of the universe. It’s a great film; don’t miss it. --SF
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