When Paramount Studio is trying to craft a chick flick/horror hybrid . . .

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2018)

. . . they should make sure the creators of their source material are not three aces and a couple kings short of a full deck. (America's House of Horror--Universal--would never make such a goof!) ANNIHILATION contains some very early exposition dialog stating that "The Shimmer" has closed a U.S. National Park for THREE YEARS! Yet, this Shimmer incident is subject to far more secrecy than such Real Life matters as the C-in-C being a Russian Spy. No one outside of a few hundred American Special Forces (an estimate based on the size of their base and the scores of folks kibitzing on "Lena's" debriefing) seems to have a clue that there's an extraterrestrial cancer gobbling up the U.S. East Coast. Dozens of elite soldiers go missing, but there's not a peep of complaint to the media from their survivors. ANNIHILATION does not take into consideration the Real Life Fact that the U.S. National Park Service sells annual "all-access" passes, as well as passports which tourists can have stamped at EVERY site, all of which have been listed in guide books and highlighted on maps for many decades. Only Russian Spies would think that they could capture the attention span of U.S. movie audiences with such absolutely senseless plots (unless a film is billed as a spoof of Russian Cinema in the first place!).