☆☆½
A weird and ultimately unsatisfying combination of Avatar, Alien, the TV series "Lost" and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Annihilation at least deserves credit for reaching for something that is way beyond its grasp, but all good intentions aside, a convincing purpose eludes director Alex Garland in this long and sometimes plodding hybrid of action-thriller and metaphysical rumination on life and love.
It may well be that Denis Villeneuve's Arrival convinced executives at Paramount to take a chance on Annihilation, though it could also be that last year's disastrous release of Darren Aronofsky's pretentiously symbolic mother! convinced them to dump this Natalie Portman sci-fi spectacle. In any event, it's clear that the studio hasn't known what to do with Annihilation, but I've got to wonder if Garland himself knew quite what to make of adapting Jeff VanderMeer's novel, either.
That isn't to say that Annihilation falls into the same category as Aranofsky's piece of artistic masturbation -- Garland seems to want to say something here, and to do it using familiar tropes: From the tough and ready-to-fight former soldier who's leading the expedition (say hello, Ellen Ripley), to the colorful forest that sometimes glows with phosphorescent beauty (say hello, Avatar), to the love and loss that motivates the main character (say hello, Arrival), to the weird things that happen to a place on earth where magnets don't work, abandoned science facilities dot the landscape and mutant animals roam the land (say hello, "Lost"). It all ends with a glimpse into a fast-moving psychedelic vortex that might hold the answers to Life, the Universe and Everything. Every science-fiction idea of the last 50 years seems to be contained in Annihilation.
Like the strange life form that lands on Earth in the form of a meteorite as the movie begins, Annihilation absorbs those earlier stories and refracts them into something both the same and different, giving us a movie that frequently feels awfully familiar, then veers off into a totally new direction that should, in theory, lead to something utterly new ... but doesn't.
Where Annihilation goes is into a post-climax, pre-credit scene that should hold the answers to the questions the movie has proposed so well, but instead ends with Portman's character, a noted cell biologist named Lena, saying only that she doesn't know what happened.
Well, if she doesn't know what happened, and can't make sense of what she's experienced, neither can we. There was a practical reason Kubrick ended 2001 with the unspeaking Star Child -- the babe couldn't explain what we had just seen, couldn't even try; his lifeless eyes meant we needed to figure it out for ourselves. Annihilation also ends with a pair of eyes, but the person behind them should be able to give us more information about the film's ponderous, borderline silly final 15 minutes.
Yet, for hard-core science-fiction fans, Annihilation has a lot to offer, including its central idea that alien life could replicate here on Earth in ways we don't understand. Annihilation is a more highbrow expression of a great line in 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which Kirk shows Spock and Bones McCoy a video description of the Genesis project, which would take a dead moon or rock and turn it into a living, breathing planet. If the device detonated where life already existed, Spock logically reasons, "It would destroy such life in favor of its new matrix," a response that drives Bones batty.
But that's essentially what Lena discovers here when she walks into the strange area called "The Shimmer" that has started to consume parts of the Gulf States -- one of the towns that it took over early on is helpfully named Ville Perdu, or "Lost City," in case we missed that little snippet. The town is a weigh station of sorts on the way to Ground Zero of the Shimmer, a coastal lighthouse where the meteorite first struck.
Lena is joined by four other women with various credentials: Tuva Novotny plays a geologist; Tessa Thompson is a physicist; Gina Rodriguez is a paramedic; and Jennifer Jason Leigh is a psychologist. It's not too long before -- again, shades of TV's "Lost" -- one character observes how emotional distance from the lives they have "at home" binds them together even closer; they're all battling inner demons.
They're not generally traditionally trained soldiers, because the ones that have been sent into the ever-growing shimmer -- including Lena's husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), who never returned from his mission ... or, wait, did he? Kinda sorta, and his maybe-there-maybe-not return from the presumed dead is what kicks off Annihilation, sending the five women into the field to see if they could do what men before them could not.
Their problems begin almost immediately, as time seems to both stretch and contract inside the Shimmer. Everything does, and everything changes: species are cross-breeding with other species in wild ways -- reptile with shark, flowers with each other, and most distressingly, a bear with ... a human? Or at least a human's voice. In Annihilation's one big scene of horror, which is genuinely disturbing, a mutated bear with the voice of a screaming, dying woman attacks the survivors. This is the stuff of nightmares, handled effectively by Garland.
Less effective, though, is the why of all this happening, and by the time one character begins turning into a plant, quite literally, it wouldn't be unusual to expect audiences flocking to the exits in droves, as I experienced during my screening.
For the faithful who stay, just know: There will be no answers. Like "Lost," Annihilation teases early on that it will provide answers to its central mysteries, but it never does. You won't learn what kind of alien life it is, where it comes from or what it wants, other than to take over. And you certainly won't learn exactly what is going on in the film's big, crazy, effects-filled, explosive (literally) finale.
Something like this happens: Lena finds the lighthouse where it all started, which is covered in colorful, mysterious lichens and surrounded by a crystal forest. (This happens long after Portman has rescued the half-alligator-half-shark.) She goes in. She finds Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) the psychologist who, for unknown reasons, wanted to get there first. They talk a little bit, Ventress tells her annihilation is coming. Then she explodes into a hundred shafts of light, one of which pulls a little big of Lena's blood away and uses that one cell to divide and divide and divide until a new person is made -- formless, shapeless.
It's this person/thing Lena grapples with in the film's climactic scene, struggling against -- what? -- her inner demons? Or outer ones? And when she manages defeat, everything just ...
Well, I won't get that far, lest you see Annihilation. I can't say I recommend it for almost anyone. Despite its brilliant production design, fantastic visual effects, and clearly very well-intentioned story, it just fails to coalesce. The final scene may try the patience of even the most ardent sci-fi-fan.
I wanted to be able to report back that I am clever, that I understood that final (or next-to-final) scene and the meaning of the very, very last shot, too.
But I'm not that clever. Annihilation isn't a film I'd ever see again, but for all of its faults, it's got sophistication, great acting, wonderful design, an (intentionally) grating sound effects score, where it falls down is the one place movies can't fall down: Telling a completely satisfactory story.
In Annihilation, Garland seems to be so wrapped up in creating visual spectacle that from the beginning to the end, we're left with so many secrets that it's impossible to know exactly what is going on -- and it's a shame that the actors, judging by their frequently quizzical facial expressions, seem to have felt the same way, and that they can't quite overcome the material.
There are some great moments in Annihilation, and I guess a great idea, too. It may take me a while to ponder what this film means in its entirety. Or maybe I just won't bother. I'm not sure Annihilation is good enough to warrant extra attention.
Viewed Feb. 24, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
2015
It may well be that Denis Villeneuve's Arrival convinced executives at Paramount to take a chance on Annihilation, though it could also be that last year's disastrous release of Darren Aronofsky's pretentiously symbolic mother! convinced them to dump this Natalie Portman sci-fi spectacle. In any event, it's clear that the studio hasn't known what to do with Annihilation, but I've got to wonder if Garland himself knew quite what to make of adapting Jeff VanderMeer's novel, either.
That isn't to say that Annihilation falls into the same category as Aranofsky's piece of artistic masturbation -- Garland seems to want to say something here, and to do it using familiar tropes: From the tough and ready-to-fight former soldier who's leading the expedition (say hello, Ellen Ripley), to the colorful forest that sometimes glows with phosphorescent beauty (say hello, Avatar), to the love and loss that motivates the main character (say hello, Arrival), to the weird things that happen to a place on earth where magnets don't work, abandoned science facilities dot the landscape and mutant animals roam the land (say hello, "Lost"). It all ends with a glimpse into a fast-moving psychedelic vortex that might hold the answers to Life, the Universe and Everything. Every science-fiction idea of the last 50 years seems to be contained in Annihilation.
Like the strange life form that lands on Earth in the form of a meteorite as the movie begins, Annihilation absorbs those earlier stories and refracts them into something both the same and different, giving us a movie that frequently feels awfully familiar, then veers off into a totally new direction that should, in theory, lead to something utterly new ... but doesn't.
Where Annihilation goes is into a post-climax, pre-credit scene that should hold the answers to the questions the movie has proposed so well, but instead ends with Portman's character, a noted cell biologist named Lena, saying only that she doesn't know what happened.
Well, if she doesn't know what happened, and can't make sense of what she's experienced, neither can we. There was a practical reason Kubrick ended 2001 with the unspeaking Star Child -- the babe couldn't explain what we had just seen, couldn't even try; his lifeless eyes meant we needed to figure it out for ourselves. Annihilation also ends with a pair of eyes, but the person behind them should be able to give us more information about the film's ponderous, borderline silly final 15 minutes.
Yet, for hard-core science-fiction fans, Annihilation has a lot to offer, including its central idea that alien life could replicate here on Earth in ways we don't understand. Annihilation is a more highbrow expression of a great line in 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which Kirk shows Spock and Bones McCoy a video description of the Genesis project, which would take a dead moon or rock and turn it into a living, breathing planet. If the device detonated where life already existed, Spock logically reasons, "It would destroy such life in favor of its new matrix," a response that drives Bones batty.
But that's essentially what Lena discovers here when she walks into the strange area called "The Shimmer" that has started to consume parts of the Gulf States -- one of the towns that it took over early on is helpfully named Ville Perdu, or "Lost City," in case we missed that little snippet. The town is a weigh station of sorts on the way to Ground Zero of the Shimmer, a coastal lighthouse where the meteorite first struck.
Lena is joined by four other women with various credentials: Tuva Novotny plays a geologist; Tessa Thompson is a physicist; Gina Rodriguez is a paramedic; and Jennifer Jason Leigh is a psychologist. It's not too long before -- again, shades of TV's "Lost" -- one character observes how emotional distance from the lives they have "at home" binds them together even closer; they're all battling inner demons.
They're not generally traditionally trained soldiers, because the ones that have been sent into the ever-growing shimmer -- including Lena's husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), who never returned from his mission ... or, wait, did he? Kinda sorta, and his maybe-there-maybe-not return from the presumed dead is what kicks off Annihilation, sending the five women into the field to see if they could do what men before them could not.
Their problems begin almost immediately, as time seems to both stretch and contract inside the Shimmer. Everything does, and everything changes: species are cross-breeding with other species in wild ways -- reptile with shark, flowers with each other, and most distressingly, a bear with ... a human? Or at least a human's voice. In Annihilation's one big scene of horror, which is genuinely disturbing, a mutated bear with the voice of a screaming, dying woman attacks the survivors. This is the stuff of nightmares, handled effectively by Garland.
Less effective, though, is the why of all this happening, and by the time one character begins turning into a plant, quite literally, it wouldn't be unusual to expect audiences flocking to the exits in droves, as I experienced during my screening.
For the faithful who stay, just know: There will be no answers. Like "Lost," Annihilation teases early on that it will provide answers to its central mysteries, but it never does. You won't learn what kind of alien life it is, where it comes from or what it wants, other than to take over. And you certainly won't learn exactly what is going on in the film's big, crazy, effects-filled, explosive (literally) finale.
Something like this happens: Lena finds the lighthouse where it all started, which is covered in colorful, mysterious lichens and surrounded by a crystal forest. (This happens long after Portman has rescued the half-alligator-half-shark.) She goes in. She finds Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) the psychologist who, for unknown reasons, wanted to get there first. They talk a little bit, Ventress tells her annihilation is coming. Then she explodes into a hundred shafts of light, one of which pulls a little big of Lena's blood away and uses that one cell to divide and divide and divide until a new person is made -- formless, shapeless.
It's this person/thing Lena grapples with in the film's climactic scene, struggling against -- what? -- her inner demons? Or outer ones? And when she manages defeat, everything just ...
Well, I won't get that far, lest you see Annihilation. I can't say I recommend it for almost anyone. Despite its brilliant production design, fantastic visual effects, and clearly very well-intentioned story, it just fails to coalesce. The final scene may try the patience of even the most ardent sci-fi-fan.
I wanted to be able to report back that I am clever, that I understood that final (or next-to-final) scene and the meaning of the very, very last shot, too.
But I'm not that clever. Annihilation isn't a film I'd ever see again, but for all of its faults, it's got sophistication, great acting, wonderful design, an (intentionally) grating sound effects score, where it falls down is the one place movies can't fall down: Telling a completely satisfactory story.
In Annihilation, Garland seems to be so wrapped up in creating visual spectacle that from the beginning to the end, we're left with so many secrets that it's impossible to know exactly what is going on -- and it's a shame that the actors, judging by their frequently quizzical facial expressions, seem to have felt the same way, and that they can't quite overcome the material.
There are some great moments in Annihilation, and I guess a great idea, too. It may take me a while to ponder what this film means in its entirety. Or maybe I just won't bother. I'm not sure Annihilation is good enough to warrant extra attention.
Viewed Feb. 24, 2018 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
2015
