Annihilation

Annihilation

Alex Garland’s “Annihilation”, which is visionary and disturbing, does not fit into any of the neat boxes of many recent films in what can be described as sci-fi genre boom. There has been a lot of sci-fi around in the late ‘10s whether big-budget movies like “Blade Runner 2049” or Netflix releases like “Mute” or “The Cloverfield Paradox”. Most of these owe a significant debt to at least one of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001,” Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” or the Wachowskis’ “The Matrix.”

But even within this resurgence it is hard to find very many movies that build themselves out Tarkovsky films like “Solaris” or “Stalker,” which are science fiction used in an uncomfortable emotional register because that kind of filmmaking is really difficult. So difficult, in fact, that Paramount didn’t know what do with their movie when they made it barely promoted, held from press until a few days before release, and sold to Netflix for international markets. Maybe they’re still smarting from the failure of “mother!,” but they’re burying a genre gem here: It’s tough stuff, ambitious filmmaking that people will be picking apart for years. You’ll hate yourself if you miss it.

A lighthouse gets hit by something that looks like a meteor in the first shots of Alex Garland’s Annihilation. Then we cut to what seems to be one woman being interrogated by another man wearing a hazmat suit while other people watch them through glass and wear protective masks even though they’re not actually in the same room with her. Who is this woman? Why are they treating her like some kind of biohazard?

Then we flash back presumably to sometime before Lena (Natalie Portman) was possibly radioactive. She appears to be getting over grieving for Kane (Oscar Isaac), her husband who she believes has been KIA for a year while on a covert mission: He comes up the stairs and into her room. But there’s something off about this homecoming even before Kane dead-eyed, not himself starts spitting up blood. So there he may be, but home he most certainly is not.

Garland shows us a quick flashback to a playful, smiling Kane so that we can know along with Lena that something ain’t right with this dude. And Garland’s brilliant at giving us just what we need a line here, a scene there, a flashback when it’ll help us process or analyze what’s happening in front of us to keep us one step behind him without ever losing our interest in trying to catch up. So then Kane starts spitting up blood.

Soon enough they bring Lena to the Southern Reach, which is the research facility located few miles outside the lighthouse where that meteor hit earlier. On the horizon near some trees stands what I can only describe as a wall made out of rainbows. Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) tells her it’s called ‘The Shimmer,’ and they’ve been investigating it for three years now: No radio signals have come back from beyond The Shimmer; no manned missions have produced any survivors until Kane.

The assumption is that something in there kills people or people go nuts and kill each other. Lena, Dr. Ventress and three others tough-girl Anya (Gina Rodriguez), quiet Josie (Tessa Thompson) and amiable Cass (Tuva Novotny) will head into The Shimmer, make it to the lighthouse then return. Maybe.

Almost nothing has been ruined by this review at this point, in case you were wondering. “Annihilation” becomes itself when the team enters the woods, a sci-fi film setting that takes its time revealing itself.

This is not an alien planet, and yet there’s something dangerous and biologically altered about these woods. Garland doesn’t let us see too much of what Lena (Natalie Portman) and her crew find inside or outside the lighthouse they’re investigating he shows just enough to keep us confused in a good way, and in the moment with them. It’s a movie that balances being disorienting with grounded performances from its cast; we believe each interaction and are afraid of what happens next.

“Annihilation” could have easily become silly or campy. If I told you about some of its scarier scenes your mind might go to bad places but Garland somehow makes all of the insanity work, and it’s thrilling to watch him try.

“Annihilation” is about keeping tone and keeping action relatable enough so that it doesn’t spin off into something easily dismissible. Cinematographer Rob Hardy, who also shot “Ex Machina,” works with Garland to use the natural world as effectively here as they used those sleek lines and reflections of the lab in their previous film. And the sound design especially during the climax is spectacular, keeping us on edge with atonal noises that almost sound like they’re turning in on themselves most of all though artistic success comes down to how Garland metes out information visually.

He’ll often show us one thing, then subvert it with his very next image which is an ambitious but perfect way to tell a story driven by themes such as duality and corruption. There’s also a centerpiece scene involving an attack at night that’s straight-up one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in terms of design and direction reminded me of the first time it’s clear that everyone is probably going to die in John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

There were times when the structure of “Annihilation” frustrated me just a little bit (although I’m eager to see it again and wonder if that complaint will fade) flashbacks within flashbacks do that and I’m not sure Garland’s final act works as well as it could have. There’s an inherent problem with mission films like “Annihilation” in that the journey is almost always more engaging and interesting than the destination; questions make for better art than answers. But Garland leaves enough open for discussion that he saves it artistically, and produces some of his most striking visuals in those closing scenes.

“Annihilation” is not an easy film to discuss. It’s a movie that will mean different things to different people who are willing to engage with it. It’s about self-destruction, evolution, biology, co-dependence that which scares us most being that we can no longer trust our own bodies. It’s meant to stay with you long after the credits roll in this recent wave of sci-fi films it certainly accomplishes that goal.

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