Empty and lost

Rating: 1/10 (29 March 2018)

The vast range of responses to a film like this is fascinating. It must reflect the many different ways we all use film entertainment. For example, I love science fiction, and am always willing to suspend disbelief, but to me 'Westworld' is based on a ludicrous premise, has no real heart, and manifestly rushes round during the last couple of episodes desperately inventing unbelievable fixes and switches to the plot to get it to work.
But the imagery is wonderful, and apparently to many loyal viewers this more than makes up for it's other shortcomings ..
Similarly, 'Annihilation' looks like a significant film, talks like a significant film but in the end is nothing more than a rather tedious exercise in beautiful CGI and pseudo philosophy. But the scary stuff ( weird beasts that have skulls instead of real heads, writhing things in people's stomachs etc,) are randomly plucked from the well established horror movie playbook.
There is nothing remotely original about anything in the film. Nothing.
When studio heads dump a $40M movie straight to Netflix you know that even they can recognise a stinker.
Yet there are those who've apparently just watched the movie of a lifetime...