It Gets Progressively Weirder As It Moves Along

Rating: 3/10 (29 May 2019)

I watched this because of Natalie Portman. I'm a fan of hers and have generally enjoyed her work, but found "Annihilation" to be one of her weaker films. The entire cast, in fact, left something to be desired - to me at least. It's largely an all female cast, following five "soldier-scientists" on a mission into a state park to investigate a strange phenomenon known as "The Shimmer" which seems to be gradually expanding and swallowing up everything it encounters. But the five women seemed to have little chemistry with each other. Portman's "Lena" is the central character. Her husband was sent on a previous expedition to investigate "The Shimmer" and was presumed to have been lost, only to mysteriously re-appear a year later without explanation. So Lena volunteers to go on the next expedition. The first hour or so wasn't bad as it established the basic mystery, but as we went deeper into "The Shimmer" with the team, the movie became weirder to the point of being just plain weird by the end.
"The Shimmer" causes plants and animals to mutate and seems to act as some sort of mirror or prism as it reflects what it discovers back by creating new - and often dangerous - forms of life. We see (until the last 20 minutes or so) mostly mutated (or mirrored?) animals. They're created by CGI and frankly I thought the CGI effects left a lot to be desired.
Although we do find out essentially how "The Shimmer" works, its origins and its purpose are left largely unresolved - which was perhaps deliberate. Maybe there simply was no explanation. It was just a mysterious phenomenon that will never be understood. But the lack of explanation and then the open-ended ending left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It was yet another example of a movie (and, more correctly, movie-makers) that simply seem to presume that a sequel will be coming regardless of the critical response.
If a sequel does appear, I personally won't be watching it. I found this disappointing in the end and - after that first hour of establishing the mystery - largely unfocused and often barely coherent. (3/10)