Self-important B-movie

Rating: 5/10 (14 March 2018)

Annihilation riffs on Stalker, Predator and The Thing and manages to be worse than all of them, even Stalker, and that was really boring.
The problem is that Garland's script is more interested in the science fiction of 'The Shimmer' rather than the characters, so we end up with Lena (Portman), the bland protagonist; Dr. Ventress (Leigh), the insufferable team leader with a smugly nonchalant demeanour; Anya (Rodriguez), an aggressive, thuggish stock character; and Josie (Thompson), a bookish non-entity. There was one other, I think, but when the characters are this disposable, who cares?
There is little to make up for this dearth of character and chemistry; we get some sense of adventure and a few thrills and scares but in each case they are fleeting and mediocre. Instead, we get a bit of jumped-up B-movie science fiction that's presented in a miserably glum, portentous manner. Also, the CGI has a distinct lack of tangibility and is thoroughly overused.