Annihilation: 6.3

Rating: 6/10 (12 April 2018)

After the success of Ex Machina, Alex Garland has seemed to have let that success go to his head in "Annihilation". This movie is pretentious yet original, smart yet dumb, well made yet poorly made, and riveting yet boring. It's an inconsistent mix of those things from start to finish. The first half of this movie is a slow burn, the only thing that gets you past it is the anticipation of what will come in the end, which the movie builds on very well. The mutations that occur in the shimmer are mostly creepy, some make you scratch your head, but watching this plethora of mutations unfold, ranges from haunting to paranoid to peaceful. The music is sort of like the mutations. Merging two things that don't go together, the blend of sci-fi vibrations and country music help outline one of the themes of the movie which is putting two things that don't go together, to create something new. It works great, unlike the love story between Natalie Portman and Oscar Issacs characters that the movie hinges on. Whenever it flashes back to them in bed it makes you wanna go back to the shimmer, those scenes never payed off. I do give credit to the last thirty minutes of the movie, for giving me something that I've never seen in a movie before, but just because it's original doesn't necessarily mean that it's good. It's not even bad either. The ending just felt like it was concept with nothing behind it. It felt hollow. Overall, watching this movie is neither a good experience or a bad experience... just an experience. So I give it a 6.3