‘Annihilation’ Review

An ambitious philosophical journey masquerading as sci-fi horror. Does the film succeed in its endeavors or fall flat? SPOILERS AHEAD!

Alex Garland’s Annihilation isn’t for the average moviegoer. If you are expecting a mindless shoot-em-up with Natalie Portman fighting monsters in a fantasy world, you may leave disappointed. This movie is a slow burn, sacrificing quick pace and relentless action for ponderous moments of reflection and philosophical discussion. That works both for and against the film at times. There are moments of pure adrenaline, where we root for our heroes to beat the odds and prevail over evil, as well as moments of quiet, where we are left with only the thematic devices to hold our interest in more obscure or abstract scenes.

Identity Crisis

My primary problem with the film is how it straddles the line between arthouse and mainstream. Now I have no problem with a well-done arthouse film with a specific message, or a well-done mainstream film intended for a wider audience. But it’s tricky to blur the lines and try to appeal to high and low sensibilities at once, and Annihilation definitely tries to. It appeals to the “classic” sci-fi fan in that it asks deep questions about life and the human condition while using the environment and supernatural elements as symbolism for the discussion it poses. But it also plays up the set pieces for cheap thrills, with the usual jump-scares and grotesque imagery you’d expect from a horror/survival thriller.

Again, I’m not saying it’s not possible to have your cake and eat it, too. But the tonal inconsistencies really got to me: rather than intermingling the high-brow commentary with horrifying imagery throughout, the film seems to swing wildly from moments of quiet introspection to mindless action, like it’s divided into subsections in which a different portion of the audience gets to have their fill.

A Tale of Two Halves

And to highlight this point, the tone of the film is dramatically different at the onset from where we eventually end up. We begin as a generic thriller: a team of five female scientists embark on a fantastical quest into the Shimmer to discover the source and try to stop its spread. Lena, our protagonist, joins a team of scientists led by Ventress into the area after her husband returns home from a similar expedition that left him deathly ill. As they journey into the Shimmer the film continues the horror and survival tropes, including poor decision-making (why the hell would you stand guard at an isolated post in the middle of a field when you have a perfectly good guard tower to camp atop?), generic characters (an opening conversation serving to introduce the main female characters is about as boring and contrived as they come), and cheap jump scares (the alligator in the shack sequence serves little purpose other than to provide some action and continue the already-introduced themes of inter-species fusion).

But the final legs of the film are drastically different than the lead-up to it. All pretense of outer conflict is abandoned for a purely internal one, as Lena must enter the lighthouse at the center of the Shimmer to reckon with the force within. She discovers that in order to outsmart the alien species she encounters there, she must answer questions about herself and reckon with the decisions she’s made. Will she submit to the Shimmer and allow the inevitable spread of a higher life form do its job, as Ventress does? Or will she resist and attempt to escape, as Kane did?

What results is a beautiful sequence of self-reckoning manifested in the form of the Mimic, as the alien takes Lena’s form and prevents her from leaving by copying her every move. By absorbing Lena’s blood, the alien becomes one with her, so eventually the distinction between the two is blurred and it’s as though Lena must defeat herself to escape. This is a fascinating sequence that definitely saved the film for me, and one that kept me thinking long after leaving the theater. The only issue is that the film preceding that sequence did not match up with the psychological head-trip I was to embark on, and thus felt disjointed. By departing so frequently from the central issue of the self in favor of more generic thrills generated by fantastical outer monsters, the message of the film is muddled until the very end and runs the risk of becoming incoherent.

All Become One

The central theme of the film is self-destruction, the titular “annihilation,” examining our imperfections and tendencies to implode. All the primary characters have reason to enter the Shimmer and seek the lighthouse at its core, knowing that it will likely mean their end. Kane is upset at his wife’s infidelity and presumably seeks out the Shimmer in an angry, self-conscious stupor. Ventress is dying of cancer and believes that submitting to a higher life form is the only way she can attain purpose in life. Josie is tired of the suffering that human life entails and also submits to the Shimmer, allowing herself to fuse with the environment and become one with it. Lena enters out of guilt for causing her husband’s catatonic state, willing to sacrifice herself out of some ill-conceived respect for putting him through the same thing.

As an undercurrent for this theme, the alien life force within the Shimmer appears to bring all life together into a single organism. As the scientists progress further into the area, the creatures they encounter increasingly resemble other species. First it’s just different flowers blooming from the same vine, or giant crocodiles with molars; eventually it’s humanoid plants and bloodsucking creatures who steal the dying screams of their human victims. It’s an utterly terrifying, yet strangely beautiful concept: rather than causing the deaths of all who enter, the Shimmer brings them into the fold of a greater unit, narrowing all life down into a single organism, simplifying matters completely. And in some ways, it’s not so different to how the real world exists: all life is recycled, and death is just the transfer of biological matter from one state to another. The Shimmer simply accelerates this process.

What message does this attempt to convey? It’s not entirely clear. To me, director Alex Garland is trying to say that our self-destructive tendencies are entirely internal, and we are our own obstacle to breaking the loop of depression and bad habits. Lena is driven forward towards the lighthouse for what she believes to be noble reasons, but ultimately realizes that she is the enemy in a quite literal sense. And she finally attempts to break the cycle and escape the Shimmer, she stands in her own way, forcing her to reckon with her own life decisions that led her to that point. Garland posits that we as humans tend to blame outside influence for getting us to the bad points of our lives we find ourselves in, and encourages self-reflection to right the ship. By breaking free of the Shimmer and returning to real life, Lena has denied the natural human instinct to fall prey to our own biology: our inevitable tendency to return to the earth and join the cycle of life. Lena even calls the aging process a flaw in our biology early on in the film, foreshadowing that the central conflict involves confronting this simple fact and choosing whether to accept it or reject our own mortality, and whether that is a futile enterprise.

Conclusion

Ultimately, in spite of my issues with the film, this is a gorgeous piece of cinema. This is a movie, not a book, so a greater emphasis is placed on the visuals, and by god are they stunning. The film makes great use of the medium and, unlike many sequels and remakes and reboot films of today’s era, it has reason to exist beyond the source material (other than $$ that is). A rather bland first act is saved by strong thematic tie-ins and a smart second half that will surely confound many viewers who walked in expecting the sensibilities of the first half, and for that reason I fear this movie will not be well-loved by the public. But as someone who enjoys well-realized high-concept films, I enjoyed myself greatly, and enough to recommend it despite a sloppy front end.

VERDICT: B

A taut, surprisingly profound exploration of self-acceptance and loss that mostly lives up to its sky-high ambition while falling victim to the occasional genre pitfall.