Tired approach to familiar material

Rating: 6/10 (11 December 2018)

"Annihilation" is the story of a group of scientists and soldiers who journey into a mysterious, top secret environment where the normal laws of physics seem not to apply.
Does this sound familiar? It should. It was done before, and better, by the great Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in his film "Stalker", which was itself an adaptation of the novel "Roadside Picnic".
Being that this is not an original idea, "Annihilation" really cries out for some kind of new, original approach to its familiar material. It does not happen upon one. I failed to mention above the fact that all the scientists and soldiers who enter the forbidden zone are female. Why did I not mention this? Because it harly seems to matter. Who cares what the gender of characters in a sci fi movie is? You watch it to have your mind blown with special effects, and your imagination dazzled with the impossible.
The reason why I mention the gender of the protagonists now is because I fear that the filmmakers thought that having the main characters all be women is what passes for "novel and original" these days. Nope, lads. 'Fraid not. We're not all gender studies professors. Most people don't care about that. Seeing women on the screen isnt that mind blowing. You couldn't come up with a new approach, so you just stuck relied on the old gender switch trick, as if it were the 1950s and anyone would be surprised at that.
The only thing surprising is your lack of imagination.