Weird fiction, indeed

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2018)

I read the book, first in a trilogy, before I watched the film and in that review I bet that the movie will be better than the book, which I found pretentious and opaque. Well, I can't say if I won or lost that bet. The movie is certainly different, with many ingredients added and a lot of them removed. I thought that the acting was OK and that the visuals were very good. The only issue I had was with the story, which only ponders on things, without actually explaining or expanding on any of them. That is not a bad thing, pondering, but I guess I had to be in the mood to understand the intent of the writer/director in adapting a book that I equally didn't understand. Perhaps my knowledge of programming and AI made me like Ex Machina a lot because I understood both people and non-people in it. In Annihilation I didn't get either.
To paraphrase the character in the film, Alex Garland didn't intend to destroy the story with this film, he just wanted to change it. I don't know into what and I don't feel he even knew I was there. Of course, that may be all me.