It all makes sense -- They were on drugs!

Rating: 4/10 (9 July 2018)

First of all, let me say that the film was dazzling from a visual perspective -- at least in the second half, which played out like some bizarre music video. The CGI seemed pretty high quality and everything was over-saturated and shot through with rainbow colors in a way that I found pleasing. That's about all I can say in favor of the film, so let's get into the negative side.
Annihilation is one of those films where the completely illogical, incompetent behavior of the characters is the only thing that propels the plot. I won't go into detail when it comes to all the logical inconsistencies because plenty of others have already, but suffice it to say that this is one where you'll be yelling at the screen in frustration.
If anyone reading is familiar with psychedelic drugs I think you'll agree that this whole mess of a film starts to make a lot of sense when viewed as a trip gone wrong. The characters start out sane enough, as does the world around them, but they soon become disoriented and confused. The distortions in the world around them are very similar to the visual side of an acid trip as well, starting with saturated colors and rainbow shimmers and leading up to the disturbing sight of the skin on their hands rippling and moving in front of their eyes -- something that anyone who's been to a Grateful Dead concert has probably experienced at some point. The film culminates in what could be seen as an episode of ego-death, with the characters who survive to the peak of the trip losing all sense of their own identity and dealing with it in separate ways: one character feels an exalted sense of oneness, another freaks out because he says he can't handle it, and another has an intense out-of-body experience.
Do I actually think that the whole movie was some kind of allegory for the psychedelic experience? Not really, I think it was just a poorly executed sci-fi film with decent visual effects. I know mental degradation was part of the plot, but it was never explained in any satisfactory way. I thought the whole thing was much more enjoyable viewed as a truly epic "bad trip," adding a much-needed change of tone and making the manic bumbling of the characters a lot more tolerable. Try looking at it that way if you like, it might save you two hours of frustration.