Based on Jeff VanderMeer's opaque and terrifying novel of the same name, Annihilation follow a group of scientists who enter an area of the Earth's surface that has been afflicted by some unknown event, causing it to be 'different' somehow. In the novel this is Area X. Here it is The Shimmer. Whichever government of the near future is in charge has attempted to understand The Shimmer, sending in expeditions and messages, yet nothing returns. Its mystery remains as impenetrable as the first day it appeared.
Starring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh, the film puts us into the point of view of the explorers trying to survive and understand something that defies comprehension. The story is told in mysterious retrospective as Portman is questioned after the event by hazard-suit-adorned men with confused and concerned looks on their faces. What happened in there? How long did it take? How did she get back? What is The Shimmer? What does it want? Her responses to questions are either to pose more questions or admit that she simply doesn't know.
We cannot understand what is happening in The Shimmer, even when it is happening in terrifying detail right in front of us we can hardly know what it means. Inside The Shimmer we see a mixing of genetics as plant and animal life forms appear to be merging into new forms. Time and distance occasionally seem to stretch or compress without meaning or explanation. There is a strong implication that the people of the previous expeditions into The Shimmer have been subsumed into its own matter. To ask what The Shimmer wants is like asking what a disease wants. It just does its own thing blind to the organism it is destroying in the process.
There may be differences in character, event and motivation, but Annihilation is an excellent example of a hard science fiction novel being transferred on to the big screen thematically intact. Themes of climate change and terminal illness are tightly woven into a plot that expertly remains mysterious all the way to the final scene. I wasn't a huge fan of Alex Garland's Ex Machina, but here he has created a wonderful adaptation of a deeply confounding and mysterious story. This should hardly be a surprise since he wrote Sunshine and 28 Days Later - more like these please Mr Garland!
Lastly - why was this on Netflix? RedLetterMedia provided a very interesting analysis of this as part of their review. They remark on how bemusing it is that in the era of #MeToo and a greater focus on the depiction of women in film, that a film with 5 female scientists doing science gets so quickly brushed under the carpet by the mainstream. This really should be the film that the studio is shouting from the rafters about to prove how sexist they aren't. But instead they've used an under-performance at US cinemas to panic about its wider release, and dumped it on to Netflix. It's an interesting point that possibly says something about the way that film releases are heading in the near future. Are we heading for a world where more thoughtful movies that are expected to attract a smaller art-house audience are released on to streaming services as standard? Will the big screen eventually be reserved for the huge blockbusters designed to draw in the massive crowd with their spectacle?
Wherever the future takes us - at present I recommend everyone check out Annihilation.
