A world of change - Annihilation

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2018)

I found the ending of the movie to be rather an upbeat one.
Each of the woman scientists, Lena, Ventress, Josie, Anya, Cass, have a serious fault in their lives.
Lena a cheater, Ventresss, sick with cancer, Cass - loss of a child, but we never find out how (was it her fault?), Josie, cutting herself (to feel alive, or feel something, why?) and Anya a recovering addict. They are seriously injured either mentally, or in in Ventress and Josie's case, physically. Are they looking for an answer to the shimmer, or are they looking for an anwer to what they perceive to be their shitty, hopeless, closed off lives. Lena buries herself in her work to forget that she probably dorve her husband into a dangerous situation. They are looking for CHANGE, and that is what the shimmer is - CHANGE, for good or bad, but it definately changes people. It changes everything on earth to be bigger (the alligator), brighter (all the flowers), for better or worse.
It is also more dangerous, so with change comes danger.
The shimmer is a metaphor for our earth changing and we as humans are changing with it, some get cancer from its toxins, some can't go on because of a loss in our lives. The shimmer is the HOPE for a change to make our lives better.
Our human cells change and intermingle with that of the shimmer. From the opening scene the movie is all about cell division like cancer changing, doubling forever increasing and going on, isn't that what the shimmer will do if it isn't stopped. But it is stopped, or is it. Maybe the shimmer is like cancer changing and mutating into something else and is immortality in its very nature. Maybe the shimer itself adapted and changed into something else inside Lena and Kane. Don't forget Lena tested her blood and it had changed, so she was already different before she went to the lighthouse. Who was it that left the lighthuse at the end, was it Lena or her double. It doesn't really matter because the ending, when she meets her husband (who has already changed and can't drink the life blood of earth - water) they embrace, intermingling who and what they are into something new, (just like in the shimmer when you touched something it changed your structure). This is perhaps a new beginning for their life together. One where they maybe don't remember that Lena cheated and that Kane ran away. To me it was a hopeful ending, the shimmer was burned away for new things to begin, just like a forest fire spurs new growth. Maybe it isn't too late for earth and the humans on it to recover, but we must realize it soon, or the shimmer will take over.