What a Mess

Rating: 3/10 (20 September 2018)

A convoluted, murky screenplay and poor execution dulls any effectiveness this cerebral sci-fi horror movie might otherwise have had.
Natalie Portman plays perhaps the most morose character ever put on screen, who joins a bunch of other volunteers to go exploring in a sort of radioactive bubble that has already brought insanity and death to others who've entered it. Okay, so she has a pretty good reason to be morose, but still. Would it have killed the filmmakers to give us a joke or two? What they find in this bubble cannot be explained by anyone who is telling you the truth about their experiences watching this movie, though one thing that I can tell you with certainty is that the visual effects used to conjure them are awful. The ending I suppose is meant to make us gasp in surprise, but my attention was diverted by the paint drying on my walls so I unfortunately wasn't able to give the makers of this movie the reaction they wanted.
"Annihilation" evokes "Avatar" in its production design (except for a late scene that rips off the look of "Alien" wholesale) and "Apocalypse Now" in its "venturing into the heart of darkness" psychology. It would have done better to avoid evoking any of those movies, because it made me just want to watch one of those instead of finishing this one.
Grade: D