Annihilation

**Annihilation** is a 2018 film starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny and Oscar Isaac, directed and written by Alex Garland and produced by Eli Bush, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Scott Rudin.

The film was a financial failure as it generated a loss of $58 million.

## Plot

Lena, a cellular-biology professor and former soldier in the U.S. Army, is debriefed by interrogator Lomax and other odd men in hazmat suits. Lena was happily married to Kane, who disappeared on a covert mission. Twelve months later, Kane suddenly comes home. He remembers nothing and expresses little. Suddenly, he vomits blood. Lena calls an ambulance, but she and Kane are intercepted by security forces and sedated.

Lena awakes in a secret facility. A psychologist, Dr. Ventress, explains that Kane's mission was to explore "the Shimmer", an expanding zone covered by iridescent light. The Shimmer emerged three years ago from a meteor that landed in a lighthouse in Blackwater National Park in Florida. Ventress organized exploratory expeditions, but no one returned except Kane. Kane now remains unconscious and on life support. Lena learns Ventress is leading a new expedition with Anya Thorensen, a paramedic, Cassie “Cass” Sheppard, a geomorphologist, and Josie Radek, a physicist. Lena volunteers to join them to help Kane, though she does not disclose her motives.

Upon entering the Shimmer, the team suddenly wakes up inside tents. They deduce several days have passed based on their supplies, but cannot remember what happened. Their communications and navigation equipment are also malfunctioning. Lena documents multiple flower species growing from single stems. Josie is attacked by an alligator; after rescuing her, Lena finds it is hybridized with a shark. Cassie tells Lena that each teammate volunteered to escape self-destructive habits, and it is human nature to practice self-destruction. Lena remembers cheating with a married colleague during Kane's missions.

Reaching an abandoned building, the team discovers evidence of Kane's expedition, including a video of Kane cutting open a living teammate to reveal slithering intestines. The team discovers the teammate’s grotesque remains shortly afterwards. That night, a mutated bear drags Cassie away. Ventress insists on continuing to the lighthouse; Lena guesses correctly that Ventress is secretly dying of cancer and wants to solve the Shimmer before she dies. Lena lies to Anya and Josie, saying that following Ventress is actually a safer route home. As they continue, Lena discovers Cassie's mutilated corpse.

The group finds human-shaped plants. Josie realizes the Shimmer scrambles all information; it refracts light and radio waves, which scrambles communications, and creates hybrids by scrambling and mixing DNA. The team realizes the Shimmer is changing their bodies, and Lena's microscope shows their cells dividing into new forms.

Anya becomes unstable after watching her fingerprints change. When she finds Kane’s picture in Lena’s pendant, Anya ties up her teammates and accuses Lena of murdering Cassie. She almost kills Lena, but hears Cassie screaming. The screams actually come from the mutant bear that killed Cassie, which took on her voice. The bear kills Anya before Josie frees herself and shoots it dead. Ventress leaves, desperate to reach the lighthouse. Josie believes Cassie’s dying mind was “refracted” into the bear, and allows herself to "refract" into a human-shaped plant to avoid a similar fate.

Lena reaches the lighthouse. Inside, she finds an incinerated corpse, a video-camera, and a hole in the ground. The camera footage shows Kane urging the cameraman to find Lena before committing suicide with an incendiary grenade. When the cameraman steps into frame, he is Kane’s doppelgänger.

Lena descends into the hole and finds Ventress. Ventress says something is inside her, but she cannot tell what it is or whether it wants anything. Ventress then disintegrates into a shimmering cloud alien that absorbs a drop of blood from Lena's face and changes into a humanoid being. Lena attacks it and leaves the hole, but the figure teleports outside. It switches between copying Lena’s movements and attacking her. Just as the humanoid shapeshifts into Lena, Lena tricks it into igniting one of Kane's leftover grenades. Burning, the being sets the lighthouse ablaze as Lena flees. The Shimmer dissipates.

Lena surmises that the Shimmer was not intentionally destroying Earth, but merely doing what it does naturally. She is told that Kane recovered rapidly when the Shimmer disappeared. Lena visits Kane, and asks if he is the "real" Kane; he replies, "I don't think so." He asks if she is Lena, and she gasps, but she does not answer. Kane's doppelgänger and Lena embrace, and their irises shimmer.