Annihilation - Horror Sci-Fi on an LSD Trip

Rating: 7/10 (8 July 2018)

After her US marine husband Kane (played by Oscar Isaac, well that's at least one Oscar in the pocket) returns from a mission and doesn't appear to be the same person as before, soldier-turned-biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) wants answers. She ends up on a all-female mission into 'the Shimmer', an otherworldly, constantly growing soap bubble glow, emanating from a lighthouse, and from which none bar Lena's husband has made it back alive, albeit barely.
Of course, when your best-trained soldiers don't ever return from a mutant bog, perhaps a team of scientists will fare better. Here's an M16, the best of luck to you!
All of the tough girl team seem to have a backstory for wanting to go on what clearly is a suicide mission, and Lena, too, happily volunteers. A lovely coincidence she's a celebrated biologist, because there's wonderful stuff going on inside the bubble. From fairytale deer with glow-in-the-dark antlers to rampantly growing blossoms in all possible hues of the rainbow spectre. All biologists peer into microscopes at night when they can't sleep, and Lena does a remarkable discovery, just in time to witness one of the other ladies being eaten. Was it the anthropologist? There weren't any people left in the bubble to describe anyway. Well, as my mother used to say, night time's vermin's play time.
It seems the writers mistook that for a challenge, and hired both the animators from The Revenant and Jurassic Park for the CGI effects. I also got the idea they had a kitchen argument whether they should go for a more intellectual or a horror-like feel, and decided on a compromise. We get gory scenes of people being ripped to bits, literally grown apart, cut open, and eaten from the inside, while the scientists engage in a lively discussion to make sense of it all. Instead of getting a feel for the thinly drawn characters, however, the result is a sense of alienation (heh, sorry). Perhaps that was intentional.
Annihilation's scenes are dream-like overall, with flashy lense flares around every corner and lush, extravagant foliage eating away at the world as we know it. The rampant parasitic proliferation looks quite natural, and the mutation notion allows it to be plausible for a long time. Up to the point where, after delivering a semi-esoteric speech contemplating the meaning of life, the ever-distant Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) throws back her head, and disintegrates into a bright beam of particles emanating from her mouth. You read that right.
When Lena returns after fighting a galvanised version of herself, everything has returned to normal. Or has it? I guess we can best summarise it in the same words as the most-heard answer in the film: I don't know.