This Film Gave Me the Shimmers

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2018)

The conceit of "Annihilation" is that an alien force has landed on earth at the site of a lighthouse on a coastal national park. Over the course of three years, the aliens have created bizarre mutations in the flora and fauna of the park, turning it into a kind of Jurassic Park fairyland. The human military forces sent in to investigate have either been mutated into zombies or changed in a way that leads them to destroy each other, due to the wormlike aliens invading their bodies. The all-women Mission: Impossible team is to meet face to face with what the military has dubbed The Shimmer, which is the essence of Darwin run amok.
A task force of five female scientists with military skills is sent to the park with the goal of reaching the lighthouse to discover what the true nature of the aliens. All five women have suffered personal losses in their lives and appear emotionally fragile as a paramilitary unit. They are led by Dr. Ventress, who is dying of cancer. One woman has in the past made an attempt on her life. Another is a recovered alcoholic. Yet another lost her daughter to leukemia and is emotionally scarred. And the biologist Lena has a husband who is a casualty of The Shimmer: he is the only soldier to return alive, but is clearly in an altered state.
One of the themes that the filmmakers attempt to develop is how human beings are self-destructive creatures. This theme is apparent in the five women who are described in the film as "damaged goods." It is even apparent in the most stable of the characters, Lena, who was cheating on her husband with a colleague. Is it a coincidence that her husband is invaded by the aliens at a time when their marriage is crumbling from within?
The pretentious nature of the film suggests that the alien life has refashioned planet earth as a "prism" that internalizes characteristics of plant and animal life, replicating cells and spitting them out in new mutations, such as strange alligator, bear, and deer hybrids and plant life that resembles the Land of Oz. Lena's husband Kane observed that God made a mistake in his design of human DNA. But the filmmakers suggest that the aliens want to extract something from life on earth for their own purposes.
The women's task force is divided in their goals as they approach the lighthouse. Dr. Ventress wants to "face it." Lena wants to "fight it." Josie wants to give in to it. Unwittingly, the film turns comic when Lena dukes it out with The Shimmer in an extended dance sequence, a "pas de deux" that demonstrates that her adversary does not understand what exactly is a phosphorous grenade.
As Lena confronts her "doppelganger" in the lighthouse, one of the two dance partners is going to experience annihilation. Their dance of death will ultimately demonstrate the one ingredient that The Shimmer really need from humans: a brain.