Grief and Its Annhilations

Annihilation is a sci-fi adventure written and directed by Alex Garland loosely adapted from the first book of the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. If you’ve seen Ex Machina and enjoyed its slow moving, but thoughtful pace you’ll probably like this movie since it has been written and directed by the same person. That’s not to say they’re are too similar in theme nor plot, but rather that something interesting, mysterious, and potentially dangerous is introduced while the cast and audience both try to understand the phenomenon together which makes for a very entertaining and meditative film. While it was released in theaters in the U.S, internationally it was only released on Netflix. This was a result of negative test-screening results finding the film was “too intellectual” for the general audience and though that might give it a pretentious air it definitely is worth watching for its complex and thought provoking plot.

The film’s actual plot explores the anomalous “Shimmer” which that many have gone into, but only one has returned. This one that has returned does so after a full year of disappearance and happens to be the husband of the ex-military biologist, Lena (Natalie Portman). She eventually meets the next team who is going into the Shimmer consisting of a physicist, Josie Radick (Tessa Thompson),  an anthropologist, Cassie Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), and a paramedic, Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez).

One of the film’s strengths are the small details which say a lot while many times being very subtle. Towards the beginning there a lot of things that can be figured out by the viewer on their own before its actually revealed through actual dialogue. For example, when we’re first meeting Anyaits revealed that she is sober and most likely a former alcoholic when we see all the rest of the characters around her drinking while she is just drinking root beer. Which can then explain some later lack of proper coping mechanisms. Additionally, a viewer might figure out why a swamp, which I usually think of as brown, boring, and ugly can look so pretty with a rainbow tinted light peeking past all of the trees hanging above. Details like these that aren’t in focus, but still reveal a lot about the nature of the characters and the setting are one of the things that make this movie great, even a second time around.

The cast of people with imperfect lives gives a feeling that their reactions are realistic and warranted. These are reactions to a strange sickness that is gained in the Shimmer. This sickness is akin to many elements of cancer with cells mutated out of control while we try to rationalize and figure out why it's happening all the while people are still suffering from it. The benefit of our realistic characters is that we feel for their losses and draw yet more parallels to how they deal with loss, sickness, and a feeling of hopelessness. From what I’ve seen everyone has been affected by cancer one way or another and how it changes the person who goes through it and the people who are closest to them can be dramatic.  This is in no way to limit the film’s themes to just those to have been affected as it is generally addressing how humans deal with grief cancer happens to be the one of the main causes that has lines being drawn to its effects although there are other tragedies addressed.

While the film does warrant thoughtfulness with its complexity water sometimes slips through the cracks. Whenever I watch, what I thought was a really good movie I usually follow it up by reading other people’s negative reviews on the internet and why I am wrong to have enjoyed such a garbage movie. Of course, there is a limitless supply of these types of reviews on the internet even for cult classics and those with near 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Often the one star reviews for movies somehow go into how it's against their political beliefs or how its not representing their particular view isn’t represented in this artistic venture, but a lot of times there a lot of good points made. For Annihilation, in particular, there are a decent amount of nitpicky comments and a lot of people who seem to have straight up, just not understood the movie. While there are some flaws that are definitely oversights they feel more like logical errors that don’t really detract from the overall movement and impact of the movie.