A true sci-fi masterpiece of chaos, death and self-destruction

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2018)

Alex Garland has gone into alien territory with his loose adaptation of the novel Annihilation. With his last film Ex Machina feeling like it was grounded in our reality with how the technology was presented, here Garland transported me as an audience out of the plausible and into a chaotic hybrid of a dream and nightmare.
Told through very sketchy interviews by Natalie Portman's Lena, Annihilation starts out in familiar sci-fi event territory (similar to 2016's Arrival) with the reveal of a translucent unearthly wall called the Shimmer. It continues to slowly grow like an infection consuming the land with anything or anyone that enters it never returning. Enter our core group of all-woman scientists who enter the Shimmer to get answers that past expeditions have failed at. Once inside the Shimmer, the story begins shifting more into a post-apocalyptic visual style that blends Apocalypse Now with Alien and The Thing. But by the end you will feel like you experienced a dream that will make question what you saw in the Shimmer.
Annihilation itself is the true theme of the story in not just about an alien force threatening our way of life through mutation and ecological destruction. Like Ex Machina in a spiritual way, Garland is really focusing on how human beings harm themselves by their own self-destructive behaviour whether it is suicidal tendencies, paranoia, pride, addiction, guilt or lying to pretend life is just perfect. Following Lena's perspective into the Shimmer, we meet the supporting cast of characters who from the start appear to be perfectly sane people from the cold-hearted psychiatrist Ventris (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the calm and shy physicist Radek (Tessa Thompson), the tough, confident medic Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez) to the kind-hearted Shephard (Tuva Novotuny). But in reality they are broken human beings made from personal loss and their own insecurities. And these faults are displayed by their reactions to the alien threats and the psychological and biological effects the Shimmer has on them. Lena as the protagonist starts as someone you automatically sympathize with but through the course of flashbacks and events you see how her questionable choices in the past may have inflicted too much damage on others within her personal relationship. By the third act, her journey through the Shimmer becomes one less of proving how good she is as a person but more about confronting her own problematic nature.
The world within the Shimmer is a place that feels haunting, alien but beautiful thanks to Garland's film crew including production designer Mark Rigby, cinematographer Rob Hardy and a creepy, alien-sounding score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salibury. The way the sunlight reflects from the Shimmer's rainbow surface and the overgrowth of colourful hybrid fungus and plant life makes the Shimmer-affected area feel like you stepped out of Kansas and entered the realm from The Wizard of Oz. And there it is filled with mutated wildlife that ranged from looking fantastical to nightmarish with their death-like appearances. Thanks to some amazing visual and practical effects, the creatures never feel like they are too exaggerated or spectacular. Yet you can't help to but to believe there is a not-of-this-world element in a fearful awe-inspiring way.
In the final act, the story, much like the landscape and creatures, evolves or mutates. It becomes a surreal and cerebral visual event that left me in awe and shock with questions. After some time to think I see it perfectly reflects the question surrounding Annihilation of whether death by our own genetic and psychological devices is an end or a new start for something that can be improved.
I don't personally agree with Paramount selling the international rights to Netflix, especially with the disappointing Cloverfield Paradox, but I can understand why this isn't a movie for everyone. It can be frustrating depending how you interpret the ending. The movie doesn't give you an explanation of everything as it says we don't generally always have rationale explanations for our own chaotic tendencies. For me I enjoy that kind of approach because this movie felt like true science fiction right down to its cerebral core. If you want the full out-this-world kind of experience that I got with this movie, see it in a theatre, if possible, as soon as you can before you can only watch it only in Netflix on your tv or laptop.