Gorgeous Sober Sci-Fi Drama

Rating: 6/10 (28 February 2019)

Alex Garland may not be a household name but film nerds know his name very well. This is the man who has created some excellent genre film in the past few years. He is the writer of such films as 28 Days Later, Dredd and Ex Machina which he also directed. When his name is attached to anything I get excited. When I heard about Annihilation, I did get excited. He was making original sci-fi with an outstanding cast. There's something about original ideas that makes me very stoked. I want more original films, especially sci-fi. It's one of my favorite genres. There are so many places to go with it. Garland is one person who I hope keeps coming up with fully developed original ideas because the film industry needs them. His latest endeavor, Annihilation is a layered movie that hits a lot of high points and a few low points.
The film follows a biologist named Lena, played by Natalie Portman. She is grieving with the loss of her husband, Kane, Oscar Issac who went disappeared on a top secret military mission. When Kane shows up one day he's not the same. Lena can't get any answers from him. He has a medical emergency and on the way to the hosptial, the ambulance is stopped by vans in black. Lena wakes up in a military facility and explained that Kane was on a team that went on a mission to the odd zone and has been the only person to come back. Needing answers Lena joins the next mission into the Shimmer, an all-female team that features Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson. What they meet in the shimmer is something so expected and life-changing.
This film is very much about dealing with loss and demons of all time. Each member of the mission has something they are overcoming or struggling with. Whether it be the loss of a family member, drug addiction, self-harm or guilty of past, each of our characters has something troubling them when they go into the shimmer. It makes for the film to have layers not just layers of the zone they have to go through but layers to their personalities and actions. The entire cast is very good. Portman may get the most screen time but Leigh, Rodriguez, and Thompson all shine. Garland seems to be very good at getting good performances out of his cast while telling a deeper story.
This is thought-provoking sci-fi that answers some questions about what's going on in the film. But bigger questions are raised about humanity. That at times can slow the film down. Not in a negative way, but there is a lot to take in about the characters. Not just trying to figure out what the Shimmer is and how it is affecting the environment. Even though we don't spend as much time with each character as Lena, we are told through dialogue backstories and histories. There's a lot going on in this movie and I think it's a film to fully understand requires multiple viewings.
Something it seems like Garland is now perfecting is visual in his film. Annihilation is beautifully shot with some vivid color schemes, excellent cinematography, and pretty wild special FX. The creatures in this film are nothing you've seen before. They very much evolve from the Shimmer and the atmosphere is at times its own character. This is a film definitely made for the big screen. No matter how large your TV screen is, I don't think it will do the film justice. For that, I give Garland all the credit because you can stop watching the film when it starts. As soon as the characters get to the Shimmer, we get to see the full extent of this sci-fi adventure mystery.
I don't know what I expected the film to turn out to be. It definitely didn't see where it was going. I'm getting use to that with Garland films. Ex Machina is a film I could have predicted anything that was going to happen in that film. Annihilation is the same way. And that's a testament to the script. But there was something that just didn't hit me. I'm not sure if it was the small moments that slowed the film down. It could even be the ending that I expected some kind of big twist or a decent explanation. There was a twist but it's something that on re-watches is easily spotted. As I said earlier we are not given much explanation on the sci-fi elements in the film. The final moments of the film leave a lot to self-interpretation.
Annihilation is visually stunning, thought-provoking and well acted. It just for me is missing something I can't explain. And it kind of falls apart for me in the last 10-15 minutes. I really love that Garland is going out and making original sci-fi, we as fans need more of it. I hope that he is given the chance to make more. I know this wasn't a huge hit but it seems like it's already making a cult status run. I suggest anyone who loves smart original sci-fi to check it out. At least that means that maybe the film industry will go out on a limb with original content instead of trying to make money on know IPs.