Great world building

Rating: 10/10 (29 November 2018)

I loved Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, it's one of those weird science fiction works that stays with you. When it was announced that it was going to be made into a movie with a stellar cast lead by Natalie Portman I just had to go see it. It didn't disappoint. The essence of the novels is here, the characters, the paranoia, the weirdness and the scientific and philosophical implications. The movie is tight and spare in its synthesis of the story, but is also entertaining, action-packed and beautiful to look at. The acting is great and the care they took in building the refracted world is outstanding. This movie strikes the perfect balance between the visuals, action and intelligence. What would a first contact with alien life be like? Would it be straight forward like in Steven Spielberg's movies or The Alien franchises? Or would it be a destructive force that won't announce itself as such, but be more insidious and attack us from the inside and from another dimension to boot? The concept is fascinating and terrifying to me. In this instance, the alien force is not necessarily attacking us humans, but trying to communicate through our very own DNA, and in trying to translate "us" and our world is changing and destroying everything.