Only dubiously a "cult classic"

Rating: 7/10 (12 April 2019)

Considering both his screenplays (Never Let Me Go - to name but one work of genius), and his directoral achievements on the exquisitely-good "Ex Machina", Brit Alex Garland is a person whose work can never be sniffed at. Here with "Annihilation" he's giving - quite pretty and indeed at-times atmospheric - effect to a work by Jeff VanderMeer. So maybe the latter bears some of the blame for a story that, despite its intellectual pretensions, still looks wafer-thin in parts.
To cut that longish story short, and to spoil it greatly, there's a strange alien force that's already taken over a chunk of the USA, bringing a far-reaching, mutation-induced reworking of terrestrial biology in its wake. It is spreading, can be stopped by nothing and has put a sticky end to any who have attempted to explore inside the zone it occupies, of the so-called "Shimmer". Yet when last survivor of an implausibly all-female team of scientists Lena (played by Natalie Portman) finally reaches the zone's epicentre, one phosphorus grenade is all she needs to finish off the whole phenomenon!
Yet nobody thought to call in the United States Air Force, which currently has 1840 fighter planes looking around for just this kind of task...
How could a film trying so very hard fall at such a ludicrously low fence?
Is art really more important than content?
Is sci fi content to live without the sci?
Given that Lena is a biologist like myself, I both empathise with and envy her when she first gets the chance to try and make head or tail of the new biology she encounters in the zone - and here the film (all too briefly) reaches its zenith of (scientific) innovation. But despite a reference to hox genes, and one or two other bits and pieces, this work is never more than superfically valid as biological sci fi, despite the moments when the effects look impressive. A crocodile with shark's teeth and a "bear" that isn't one don't give us too much for our money, though the plant life has a slightly better look about it.
Frankly, Portman is only barely able to carry this off anyway, but the plot comes to such a crunch ultimately that one does tend to end a watch of this film with a big Why? And while "Annihilation" probably fares slightly better than that other arty piece of science fiction of recent times "Arrival", ultimately it smacks of much the same faux-portentous atmosphere, and that ain't good.
In contrast, another piece of British eco-sci fi that explores similar themes to "Annihilation" is Gareth Edwards's "Monsters" made 8 years earlier - on a shoestring. And for me the latter is the far better film, much to be recommended. Alternatively, if it's people gradually going crazy in the face of weird natural/supernatural phenomena that you crave, well you've got things like "YellowBrickRoad", "Cube", "Triangle" and many other pretty-ingenious quality movies to choose from.