It Could Have Been a Masterwork

Rating: 6/10 (12 August 2018)

Based on the experience watching it, I would have given "Annihilation" 8 or even 9 stars. But based on the many things where this movie fails, I can't give more than six stars.
Where it shines:
-Fantastic music and scenery
-Great Digital effects
-Atmosphere, sense of wonder
-Full of Tension, good pacing
Where it fails:
-Lacks any plausibility
-Making no sense at all
-Completely missing character development
For the positive attributes I feel no need to explain them, for the negative the following has to be said.
If you want to make a film that lasts in the audience's memory, you have to minimize the amount of "suspension of disbelief". If a movie is entirely constructed to fit the needs of the production and not the needs of the audience, something went wrong.
"Annihilition", while utterly beautiful, haunting and fascinating, during its best moments, suffers of very unbelievable premises. Remember, there is an event that is unpreceded in history, and even today it would not be possible to hide a growing anomaly that huge for a year. Further, the idea to send a platoon of armed women into the anomaly, without the possibility to report their sightings directly, is completely ridiculous. Even, or just because there were other teams before, which did not return. Who wants to waste people ? You could keep sending teams, until the alien lifeform consumes a continent, with no success.
There should be countless other, much smarter options to get a picture of the situation, but of course we have to follow the dumbest of them for only dramatical purposes.
However, on the inside, there are some completely unnecessary violent encounters, which are only there to create fear and a kind of tense that should not have found its way into this movie. I did not take "Annihilation" for an "Alien" or "Predator" horror-action thriller, but more in a "Solaris" or "Stalker" direction.
The idea of an experimenting nature, without any other primary purpose or a mindset like ours, is a great one, and executed properly, but only in fragments and in the end. I wonder if the movie wouldn't have benefitted from another thirty minutes of exploration and transformation.
So, while everything could have been great with a bit more overthinking, "Annihiliation" only partially succeeds in being impressing. On top of it, it gives us only a bit of a definition for the main charcter, the others are only shadowly persons.
In the end, you may feel tricked, as you think you have seen a good movie, that is in truth not such a one.