The Annihilation of a meaningful story

Rating: 1/10 (19 June 2018)

This movie could have been good - but was terrible. Some mainstream movies have their characters behave like teenagers in slasher movies, regardless of them officially being scientists or master assassins or whatever. I see the reason for this; in horror movies, the characters need to interact with "the dangerous thing", and if the characters act efficiently and have ressources, it turns into an action movie. So characters are dumbed down, in order to make them less efficient. The price of this, is that you get nonsensical characters, like clueless scientists.
So. The US army found this alien shimmer that expands in a zone, and they think it threatens the entire world. They have zero date from the zone. There's no reason to belive the expansion will continue indefinitely; it might just stop. It is cautious to assume it will keep expanding. This is not adressed at all. The scientists just go "it expanded yesterday, so it will keep doing so forever." Instead of using the not neglible ressources of the US Army - nuke the alien, send in entire bataillons in Apache Helicopters, or just send teams inside the bad zone for half an hour, gather data and then retreat to return the data - just go in, grab some plants and soil samples, go out.
Instead they go for the worst option imaginable; send small teams deep inside for long expeditions, thereby ensuring none will survive and bring data back. So for THREE years the US army is just watching the bad thing do it's thing and do nothing. A sane person with 10 people working for him could have gotten more information, than the US army got in three years.
So. The team with the heoine on it goes inside the zone. It is an all-female team, I guess because of current tropes. They are supposedely soliders, but carry no useable military gear in the large backpacks they probably just use to show "look it is so army-like because of the large backpacks." They have nothing with them - booby traps, mines and such - that helps them tp secure a camp in a very hostile environment. Now who'd have thought that could have been useful, everybody else that went in died, but well, that probably means all they need is tents and guns and no mines!
The team makes no sense. Why not add 10 marines to take care of them? I guess marines are so expensive: The entire world is threatened, but the US army doesn't want to waste marines on this. The team furthermore seems to have no real command structure or any routines, some team members do not know the goal of the mission, some have not bothered to look at a map of the area. At one point they sleep in a gigantic complex, potentially shot full of monsters, and do not bother to do the "secure the area"-thing soldiers love to do. Oh and it's not like it would be useful that everybody had a map, in a place where everybody else had died! Nobody could foresee you might end up alone, having no clue where you are! At the end the team leader just leaves her team, and makes nothing out of the whole "I am supposed to order you guys to make this mission happen", she is OK-doky that the others feel like disobeying orders. A team member is killed by a bear, no serious rescue mission is attempted, one team member afterwards wanders off alone (well why bring more people to cover you, it's better to send just one person while the others hand around and chill). They find a video with information of what is going on; they just watch it fast and then argue about what was in the video. Oh yes, it's not like it would be useful in saving your lived and such to understand the video, really, why waste 20 seconds of your life watching it a second time? Who needs information in a place where everybody dies from unknown reasons?
Now let me jump to the end. The hero saves the world, yet when she gets back to base, the commanders seem angry and suspicious of her. Why are they not happy that she saved the world? Did they want to include the "parents unfairly angry with teenager"-trope. I figure that if a soldier saves the world, this is the sort of thing that should make commanders happy, and give the soldiers medals. But in this movie, commanders get angry if you succeed. They sent her on what they thought was a suicide mission, yet appear suspicious/perplexed about the fact that her team members died? Are these commander guys like "we send people on suicide mission, but do not understand why anybody would die on this dangerous suicide mission! Foul play!"
At the end of the movie the heroine's husband is obviously an alien clone/copy of her real husband. She hides this from the commanders - because she is happy to have an alien copy of her dead husband? As a scientist, she should realize, that the alien will most likely eat her or infect her with something (that's what the aliens have been doing!), but who cares in a movie that thinks scientists = idiots. I also doubt that normal people would appreciate alien copies of their loved ones!
It is interesting that older movies have handled these issies well. "Stargate" has a scientist/military team that acts like a scientists/military team, and not as "team confused teenager". "Stolen Bodies" has people reacting believable to alien clones of their loved ones. A plethora of movies has believable military debriefings. It's not hard to do these hings well, yet this movie failed.