Alien Invasion

Rating: 6/10 (25 February 2018)

I saw "Annihilation", starring Natalie Portman-The Thor movies, the Star Wars movies; Jennifer Jason Leigh-The Hateful Eight, Backdraft; Gina Rodriguez-Jane the Virgin_tv, Deepwater Horizon and Oscar Isaac-The Star Wars movies, X-Men:Apocalypse.
This is a sci-fi movie that is based on the first book of the 'Southern Reach' trilogy, written by Jeff VanderMeer. The movie starts off with something hitting a lighthouse-a meteor? a spaceship?-that causes an ever expanding shimmer effect to spread outwards, at a slow pace. Things that go into the shimmer, do not come back, neither animals, people or even radio signals. Natalie & Oscar are a married couple and Oscar is chosen to go on the next mission inside. He is in the military, as was Natalie, but she has retired and is now teaching. Of course, no one returns from that mission, either. Then, one year later, just as they are preparing their next incursion, Oscar appears at home. But, he is disoriented and knows nothing about how he got home and then proceeds to have some kind of episode-he starts spitting up blood and passes out-and is taken to a medical center-notice, I didn't say hospital? Jennifer is in charge of the center-it's not a regular hospital-and tells Natalie about the shimmer and her husbands part in exploring it. Natalie decides that she wants to be on the next excursion into Area X-the new name sounds more official than the shimmer-Gina tags along on the all girl team. Each one is a scientist in their own right; a biologist, psychologist, etc. What they find is both beautiful and puzzling, at the same time. Plants and animals seem to be mutated into hybrid combinations of different species-there is a crocodile with sharks' teeth-and they find answers to what is really going on inside the shimmer, I mean, Area X. Is it some freak space virus or maybe an alien invasion? Think about the name of the movie and it could go either way.
It's rated "R" for violence, language, bloody images and sexual content-partial nudity-and has a running time of 1 hour & 55 minutes.
I don't know if I would buy it on DVD but it would be alright, as a rental.