I Don't Know

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2018)

Annihilation follows Lena, in the midst of grief from losing her husband a year ago. She's cut herself off from friends and co-workers and leads a sad existence. That is until her husband appears in her bedroom, with no idea how he got there, and appearing distant and vacant. They're both taken to a lab where Lena is introduced to The Shimmer, a bizarre optical film that's enveloped itself around a large region of swampland, originating from a lighthouse. No-one knows what caused it, or indeed what's going on inside. It could be extraterrestrial, metaphysical, or even religious, and every team and probe that has been sent inside has never been seen from again, until Kane. It's not long before Lena and a team of women enter The Shimmer to find out for themselves.
What they're greeted with, after the initial lapse of time in their memories, is a place not too dissimilar to what you'd expect, initially. As they travel further in they find specimens that should not be possible, like multiple species of flowers growing on the same plant, and animals with unusual mutations like crocodiles with shark teeth. It wasn't long before I came to the conclusion that this was definitely a movie I wish I saw in the cinema, as the film's visual identity was uniquely beautiful and nightmarish in equal measure. The use of visual effects and camera trickery creates a world within The Shimmer that truly feels dreamlike. Every scene inside is augmented with an almost oily appearance from the refractured light. The further they travel inward, the more bizarre and crazy the mutations get, like trees made of glass, and plants shaped like people, and the combination of CGI and production design exquisitely brings it all to life.
But there's a lot more to Annihilation than it's visual achievements. This isn't just a movie where our characters travel deeper into more bizarre lands, face some unstoppable antagonist, and then get the hell out of dodge. Instead Annihilation poses questions with no answers, and layers metaphors over symbolism. Dig a little deeper beneath the surface and you find a wealth of themes rarely touched upon in such an imaginative and creative way. Ultimately Annihilation is a film about self-destruction through evolution. Some of the opening lines of dialogue are about the nature of cancer cells, which is a motif that recurs throughout the film. What's inside The Shimmer is a cancerous, self-destructive nature that's chaotic without being inherently evil. It is both a dream and a nightmare, both beautiful and horrible. I wish I could delve deeper in this review, but I really don't want to spoil anything. There's so many layers to this that I could talk about it for paragraphs and paragraphs.
The third act kicks it up even further, dialing the bizarre up to eleven and delving into the psychedelic leanings of 2001. It manages to effortlessly evolve the themes of self-destruction and chaotic nature into themes of identity. What does it mean to be you? What really defines who you are? We as people are constantly evolving and changing, both physically and mentally. You are not the same person you were yesterday, and the person you'll be tomorrow is not the person you are right now, and yet we are still us. At what point do we stop being us? Or conversely, at what point does someone (or something) else become us? Is it possible to become someone else? And like a cancer, the ideas get ingrained and you can't shift them no matter how hard you try.
In this utterly peculiar movie I also want to point out the score, which is an atmospheric cacophony of soundscapes and motifs that would make the late Johann Johannsson proud. It weaves in a peaceful, calming acoustic guitar motif in with a nightmarish soundscape of synths and noises, and the sounds of the climax are so alien to the ears that they truly enhance what's going on on the screen in a way no other films have ever achieved. So bizarre are the sounds that I can't even describe what they sound like, or how they were made, but they somehow manage to remain oddly melodic as well. There's also some exquisite use of sound design throughout, creating an atmosphere inside The Shimmer that's truly unsettling. There's one scene in particular that is one of the most terrifying moments I've seen outside of full-on horror movies, and it's all thanks to the haunting sound design that turns what's already quite a scary creature into pure nightmare fuel.
On the note of nightmare fuel, Annihilation has no shortage. There's a surprising amount of gore and body horror on display here, from a guys gut being cut open to reveal weaving intestines like snakes or worms, to plants growing from scars, skeletons methodically placed in sand almost ritualistically, to a corpse torn apart from mould and moss unlike any other. If the sound design doesn't thoroughly creep you out, the body horror certainly will.
Annihilation is not for everyone, I can fully understand that, but it is absolutely for me. It's about as weird as film can get, unsettling and dark, with subtext both deep and extremely well developed. It's narrative is tightly paced, weaving together its themes in a such way that is impressively seamless. It's a film that sticks with you for a multitude of reasons, making it yet another overwhelming success for Garland from an artistic viewpoint. I give Annihilation a resounding 9/10. Watch it. Absolutely watch it. I just wish I could watch it in the cinema.