Mediocre

Rating: 5/10 (19 March 2018)

Welp, here is my review, make of it what you want.
First part is spoiler free!
Annihilation was a movie I was looking forwards too. After seeing the trailer, I was pretty hyped. But sadly, the movie is nothing like what the trailer makes you expect. The movie is very slow paced, which does'nt have to be a bad thing of course, but it comes off as very artsy, so much it distracts. The trailer makes it appear like it's a sci-fi action/survivor horror like Aliens. It is a survivor horror, but very slow paced as mentioned before.
I mention it's artsy. That's because it takes things from other movies. Stanley Kubrick mostly, I think. The out of order clips reminded me a lot of Arrival. The relaxing music against a uneasy atmosphere just made me laugh because it felt like the movie tried to hard to stand out that way. The extremely slow dialogue was annoying. And the way characters acted was laughably dumb. I don't mean the actresses themselves. Everyone does their best with the script given, but just things they do in the movie. More on that later.
Visually the movie was mostly stunning. It suffers from the "Let's shoot a lot of dark scenes." gimmick to make it scary here and there, but a lot of it looked rather nice, although I do feel they could've gone much further with surreal sights. The "horror" bits were mostly creepy scenery and some gore bits. It was just to little to make it work.
I will move on into spoilers after this, so if you liked the movie Arrival, if you like the older slow paced sci-fi movies with a lot of abstract tossed into it, go watch it. It's on Netflix.
--- Spoilers ahead! ----
I won't put a synopsis here, and mostly type about what I thought worked and what didn't. I'll talk about visual, atmosphere, characters and some other things. Quick story though:
You follow Lena who's milligary husband went in a mission 12 months earlyer but never came back. During that time she cheated on him. But feeling that her husband knows, she wont do it anymore. Then suddenly, her husband returns, gets sick and on the way to the hospital a squad of millia pick them up and puts them in a research centre. There Lena learns about the Shimmer, a wall of light that's slowly consuming the world. 3 years long the millitary sent drones, animals and people in, but nothing returned except Lena's husband. A group of 4 female scientists go in, and Lena volunteers to go in as well. They need to go to a lighthouse where the Shimmer started and find a way to stop it. During the trip the 4 scientists die, and Lena is the only survivor.
VISUAL
As mentioned above, visually it was pretty nice. Even if lacking imagination. The Shimmer looked very alien and the couple of surreal things they showed was fun. In the Shimmer, dna cells have combined with other dna cells. Like the dna of a alligator combined with a shark. Or the dna of plants with that of humans. You see some strange animals (yes, some. 3. Just ... 3. And a bird, but that was normal.) Plants in the shape of humans and a human corpse on its way to become one with a building. The latter reminded me a lot of The Thing. It looked cool though. A bear who roars and screams like one of its victims was also pretty cool. But you could have done so much more with this!
ATMOSPHERE
It was .. pretty lame. Even though it had nice looking visuals, the overal vibe lacked creepy alien atmosphere. The characters were underwhelmed so you are as well as a viewer. The music was good at times, but a relaxing guitar riff just took me out of it. It didn't fit at all and it felt pretenteous. It didn't grasp me.
CHARACTERS
I'm sorry, but the main characters are dumb. So dumb. 5 woman go into an alien territory, only a few with combat training. They all have some sort of issues. One is sick, one lost a daughter, one was suicidal.. There is a scene at night where they have a watch tower, but the leader of the group is on the ground outside, away from the tower, in a tent with the lights on, reading. In an area with unknown dangerous, aggressive animals. They had already encountered a giant slligator with shark teeth. Oh, on that, after they find that alligator, they get on 3 small rafts and travel over water! Back to the night scene, sure. They had a fence around the area, but a big, burly bear knows how to silently cut through a fence, and when our main characters know there is something there, what do they do? Keep the small light on, use s night-visor near said light and just stand around! It was so dumb. Oh, they find a vid where some soldiers went a little nuts, cut open another soldier to show that his guts are moving like a coiling snake. It's really obviously doing do. What does one of our heroes say? "Must be a trick if light." *Sigh* They all die in a stupid way. One gets killed by the bear (The most interesting char in my opinion, died first.) Then one goes nuts, ties everyone up, thinks she hears the woman that died first and is attacked by the bear! The bear growled the womans voice as their cells were mixed. Then one just.. dissapears. (I think she walked off the set and went home.) One turns to light and into a .. floating something.
And then there's the end. You can make a dozen theories about it. And that is fun mostly. What happened? Is she an alien? Did fire destroy the shimmer? It does'nt really gives answers.
I think the movie was mediocre. The idea was good, but could have been worked out so much better. The flashbacks were dumb. It didn't add much. It should have been focussing more on the Shimmer and the weirdness inside, not the side story about the cheating. It felt more like a Star Trek episode. So yeah, that's my opinion. Can you use it? I dunno. Do you agree? Cool. Have a good one.