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Superficially, "Annihilation" may look from the outside like yet another
derivative facsimile of many other sci-fi films. Elements of Kubricks' “2001”,
“Solaris”, as well as 2016's “Arrival”
come to mind. Writer-director Alex Garland (2015's "Ex
Machina") does not deal in mimicking what has come before. Thus,
while the nuts-and-bolts premise sounds like the set-up for the familiar, what
viewers are treated to instead is altogether fresh and mesmerizing and
thoroughly unshakeable, a thought-provoking story of grief, lost loves,
unearthly metamorphoses, and the delicate yet all-powerful cellular make-up
which connects everything in the world—for better and for worse.
It has been one year since Lena's (Natalie Portman) soldier husband, Kane (Oscar
Isaac), abruptly left and didn't return from an expedition into the Florida
Everglades, the site of an ever-expanding, unexplainable disaster zone known as
The Shimmer. No one who has ever gone into The Shimmer comes back out. And then
Kane does just that, appearing in his home with few memories he is willing to
divulge about his time away. When his body suddenly experiences massive internal
bleeding and multiple organ failure, Lena, a biologist and Johns Hopkins
professor, wants to get to the bottom of what has happened to her husband.
Recruited by psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to accompany her
and three fellow specialists—medic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa
Thompson), and anthropologist Cass (Tuva Novotny)—into The Shimmer, Lena accepts
what could very well be a suicide mission. Where they go and what they
experience within their deceptively beautiful, increasingly malignant
surroundings will test their strength, their fortitude, and their determination
to reach the spot of initial impact—a lonesome lighthouse standing along the
shore—where all their answers may lie.
Based on Jeff VanderMeer's 2014 novel of the same name, "Annihilation" is the
kind of film that sticks in the mind long after viewing. Impossible to discount,
it reveals increasingly captivating layers throughout and even more once it's
over. Like 2016's astounding Denis Villeneuve-helmed "Arrival," this is serious,
thinking-person's sci-fi set within a world that feels as real as our own. A
motion picture of imagination and humanity, a melding of the sumptuously
scientific and the thrillingly cathartic, "Annihilation" successfully skirts the
line between upscale and down-and-dirty.
The initial introduction of Lena's central cohorts feels slightly stock, each
one receiving little more than a one-sentence description before they are
heading into the hornet's nest. While more might have been done to build them up
at the onset, hints about who they are and why each one is willing to risk it
all for this perilous expedition gradually and effectively reveal themselves.
That they are all female is passingly mentioned once and never again, beside the
point and better for it. It is Lena whose journey we most intently follow,
however, and her life both before and after Kane's disappearance is methodically
dispersed in poignant introductory scenes and insightful flashbacks. An early
montage of Lena's struggles to move on, scored exquisitely to Crosby, Stills &
Nash's " "Hopelessly Hoping," is particularly effective.
'Unforgettable' is also a word which could best be used to describe The Shimmer,
a landscape marrying the familiar with the alien, where plant DNA, animal DNA,
and human DNA refract upon each other like a macabre evolutionary prism. A
rousing accomplishment in conceptual and technical creativity, it's a
rainbow-fogged, genre-lover's paradise of sheer intoxication and untold horrors.
Just as the visuals themselves have a way of getting under one's skin—they're
fantastical, gorgeous, and nightmarish all at once—so, too, does the melodically
screeching, hauntingly otherworldly music score by composers Geoff Barrow & Ben
Salisbury. The sound design, full of deviously ethereal and ingeniously
subliminal cues, is one of the most impressive in recent memory. And may be even
more effective then the visuals. It is a mid-section set-piece wherein the women
are stalked by a hybrid bear seemingly born from their wildest fears that takes
the cake, though, approaching a level of unquenchable fright not often or easily
obtained in film.
The encroaching scares, when they come, go for the jugular without overplaying
their hand. From a chilling find in a drained swimming pool to the
lighthouse-set third act, the film provides new, unsettling sights never before
glimpsed.
Unfortunately, the films central performance by Natalie Portman as Lena (2013's
"Thor”
The Dark World") is the movies sour note. Portman has always been an
actor that never fully connects with a character. The mechanics of her ability
are there. But that's all. The machinery is moving. But it never fully engages.
Lena is supposed to be an emotionally complex protagonist who has reached a
fateful turning point in her life. The more we learn about her mistakes as well
as her devotion, the more authentic—and sympathetic—she should become. That
never happens. The character remains at arms length. It's a problem the film has
to work hard to overcome.
She is joined by other wonderful actors: Gina Rodriguez (TV's "Jane The
Virgin"), whose Chicago medic Anya may not be as tough as she lets on; Tessa
Thompson (2015's "Creed"),
whose restrained, measured Josie hides untold pains and sadness behind the
sleeves of her shirts; Tuva Novotny (2010's "Eat Pray Love"), whose Cass has
lost the person she once was in the shadow of tragedy; Jennifer Jason Leigh
(2015's "Anomalisa") as Dr. Ventress, shielding her own personal reasons for why
she is so determined to learn the genesis and motive of the anomalies all around
them; and Oscar Isaac (2017's "Star
Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi"), making a deep impression in the
small but pivotal role of Lena's husband, Kane.
The deeper one digs into the shuddersome, biologically interconnected pleasures
of "Annihilation," the more momentous it feels. Beyond the realm of what one
could envision for the planet's future yet eerily plausible all the same, the
film expertly builds a skewed fictional reality before reaching a harrowing
conclusion impossible to predict. Although this is the first in what could
potentially become a series (it is based on book one in author Jeff VanderMeer's
so-called "Southern Reach" trilogy), it is a testament to Alex Garland's talent
as a filmmaker and writer that it could entirely stand on its own. In spite of
its title, "Annihilation" isn't just about the end of things, but also about the
beginning of something else—an insinuation of profound and portentous
consequence. |
