Annihilation (2018)
“Annihilation” was published in 2014. It was turned into a movie in 2018. I never read the book, so I have no idea how it rates, but I have to imagine it was better than the movie, because the film was not great.
The story is told in three separate timelines (before, during, after), and the main focus of the movie is the “during” line. It focuses on Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and three other little-known actors entering the “Shimmer,” a macguffin that arrived from space and has made part of the west coast deadly: No human or drone that has gone in has come back out.
The cast passed the Bechtel Test, being a quintet of women taking to each other about things that aren’t men, but somehow that feels like a hollow victory here.
Now for some Alex-nit-picks:
There were too many scenes where the characters gave each other “knowing glances.” These can work in a movie as a non-verbal device, but these weren’t done right, so it just ends up with the camera focusing on someone’s face for an awkwardly long time.
There were many very impressive set pieces done entirely with practical effects. However, when they tried to use CGI for things (like the bizarro-land creatures or non-existant buildings), said CGI was very, very bad.
There’s a shadowy government entity involved too, because the government can only ever do bad things.
One of women is mean and bitter and controlling the entire time, for no well-defined reason, other than maybe to give the audience something to hate while we wait for the story to unfold.
At one point, a “psychologist” claims that people don’t commit suicide, they “self destruct,” using some particularly dumb analogy revolving around how cells die over time and everyone drinks alcohol. It’s the kind of failed argument you’d expect from a teenager trying to sound deep or woke.
The line “The prism is refracting our DNA” was used unironically in an attempt to explain the weird things happening in the Shimmer.
None of the characters understood the concept of “self preservation,” with many of them making multiple decision that did not benefit themselves or the team, and often put them deeper into harm’s way
I think this was supposed to be “science fiction/horror,” but the “horror” parts relied too heavily on jump scares and gore, instead of actually trying to instill fear in the audience. This is neither good science fiction, nor good horror.
At one point, someone vomits a sentient fractal hologram, then explodes, while awful techno music plays in the background.
There was a “twist” ending, because there are three books and Hollywood will inevitably want to turn those into movies too. But, like the rest of the movie, it wasn’t a good twist, it was a stupid twist. It was telegraphed for the last 30 minutes.
Captain Picard never tried to use actual science to explain how the Enterprise could hit warp speeds. It was simply “we have warp drives, we go warp speed.”
“Annihilation” did the opposite: it took take a completely fantastical concept and tried to provide multiple “real science” answers to explain things, which ultimately just sounded stupid and ridiculous.
If you’re particularly bored, you too can tolerate this film.
I’m glad I didn’t pay to see it in theaters, and I can’t say I recommend it.
