ANNIHILATION – Review

In ‘The Shimmer’, the mysterious coastal landscape where writer/director Alex Garland’s ANNIHILATION takes place, nothing is as it seems. How do multiple species of flower grow from the same vine? Why does that albino alligator have rows of teeth like a shark? Why have the five women sent here to explore the abandoned, overgrown, and dangerous area been so completely misled about what awaits them there? And what’s going on in that lighthouse by the sea? By the time Garland’s challenging, confusing, occasionally terrifying, but often tedious film ends, you will know the answers to some of these questions, but not all. That may be because it’s adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by Jeff VanderMeer, and because Garland has no intention of tying his metaphysical odyssey up neatly.

In ANNIHILATION Natalie Portman stars as Lena, a Biologist and former soldier. Her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) has returned from his own trip to study The Shimmer, specifically a phenomenon that seems to emit from a lighthouse and is mutating everything in its path. He’s the only one to ever return from an expedition there alive, but he’s now a damaged man and soon lapses into a coma. Lena joins a group of five women on a mission of their own to explore The Shimmer. This crew consists of its leader, psychiatrist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), Surveyor Josie (Tessa Thompson), and anthropologist  Cass (Tuva Novotny). When the girls arrives at The Shimmer they encounter a variety of hybrid beasties, weird flowers, trees shaped like humans, and other odd and chilling genetic mutations of flora and fauna. There are flashbacks chronicling Lena’s infidelity and flash forwards to her being interrogated. Eventually, like the crews sent to explore The Shimmer before them, the women descend into madness and paranoia (at least the ones who aren’t eaten by bears first!)

ANNIHILATION  has enough beautiful images and profound ideas to linger in one’s mind, but despite achieving a properly chilly atmosphere, the film is rhythmless and shapeless. There are too many scenes of these gals carrying their guns as they trek slowly through homes and neighborhoods buried under overgrown plant life. The score by composer Geoff Barrow, guitar strumming one minute and discordant electronics the next, adds to the film’s unusual tone, at once lethargic and anxious. Like Garland’s EX MACHINA, the special effects are effective when they need to be, but low key. Moments of action, such as when they battle mutant bears and gators, interrupt the long conversations in which the women question the very nature of what they are doing while the light-show climax, which may have seemed trippy a few decades ago, goes on forever and makes the film seem dated. ANNIHILATION is a movie that demands a lot but provides little in return.

2 1/2 of 5 Stars