A vivid, emotional and profound fever dream
100/100
Original Release: 2018
Directed By: Alex Garland
Cast: Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Lee, Tessa Thompson
Favourite Quote:
"I don't know what it wants, or if it wants, but it will grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts, until not one part remains."
Favourite Shot:
After watching Alex Garland’s Annihilation I went to sleep and had the most emotional and profound fever dream, which was unlike anything that had ever happened to me before. As with all dreams I could only recollect certain aspects of it and explaining it to anybody else was impossible. But the main thing I remembered was that I wanted every living thing in the world (plants, animals, humans) to merge together as one so that we could all become a part of one another and live forever.
I was convinced this was the only way forward and in the dream I was trying to convince everyone to do it with me. And when I woke up I remember feeling as if I had discovered an answer. And I was highly emotional about it. Both excited and terrified.
Annihilation had inspired all of this inside of me. Both whilst I watched it and after the end credits had rolled and if a film can do that, no matter what a rewatch or further examination garners, it is a pretty damn good film.
Annihilation is a science-fiction, horror film adapted from Jeff Vandermeer’s novel of the same name. Garland has stated that the film is an “adaptation which was a memory of the book” meaning that he didn’t reread the novel, he just wrote the movie from memory. And this gives the film a dreamy ‘did that happen or did I imagine that bit’ atmosphere to the film.
The film is concerned with a group of women who enter ‘The Shimmer’, which is a mysterious zone that appeared after a meteor hit the Earth. The zone is contained inside a border which shimmers and appears to be expanding. And inside the zone there are various mutations of plants and animals. Any human that has gone inside has not returned.
Garland uses flashbacks and flashforwards as if time were his personal playground. At one point we will be inside the Shimmer, the next we will be in the future at the Southern Reach (the government compound that oversees the Shimmer) and then back in the past.
But none of these jumps interrupt the flow or take us out, they all feel natural. Like when you’re in a dream and you move from one place to another without remembering how you got there. Only when you think about it afterwards does it feel strange. When you're inside the dream it feels totally natural (which also reflects the feeling of being inside the Shimmer and experiencing time).
Garland, once again, wastes no time before we see our main character the biologist (Natalie Portman), psychologist Dr Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson) and geomorphologist Cass (Tuva Novotny) disappear inside the Shimmer.
The environment inside is colourful, original, creative, evocative and hauntingly enchanting. It’s as if you know what you’re looking at should be terrifying, but something about its beauty and mystery is incredibly breathtaking.
It becomes increasingly surreal and off putting inside the Shimmer the closer and closer they get to the lighthouse (which was the spot where the meteor hit). One of the first highlight scenes is when the group finds a video of Lena’s husband Kane's previous expedition.
In the video Kane (Oscar Isaac) cuts open a fellow member’s stomach to show how his insides are moving like a snake or a worm, as if there was a living creature inside of him. It’s a body horror image that makes you squirm.
In another highlight scene, after a bear-like creature kills Cass, it comes back to finish off the rest. It is an incredibly tense scene as it is and then the creature begins to use Cass' final screams and cries for help as its voice. And it is elevated to a new level of horrific. Once again Garland has created an original image that scares you to the core. This mix of familiar and unfamiliar is perfectly balanced to create these surreal images.
And it all comes together once more in the last thirty minutes. Some of the best moments in film I have ever experienced. The score, the acting, the directing, the effects and the story all come together to create a hallucinatory experience featuring doppelgängers, alien creatures, blinding light, murder and tension.
Garland had complete control over the screen and anyone watching the screen. And none of it made any sense, but you also have the feeling it was the perfect ending. And maybe it made complete sense.
A vivid, emotional and profound fever dream.that is why it is so effective. It has you thinking and thinking and thinking. There is so much in the film (the visuals, the performances, the characters, the story, the ideas) that each individual element can't be analysed and picked apart to give you a whole different interpretation than another (or combine with another).
On first watch my focus was on the idea of everything merging together to become one (hence my dream). I was especially focused on the scene where Tessa Thompson’s character says “Imagine dying frightened and in pain and having that as the only part of you which survives,” and then “Ventress wants to face it. You want to fight it. But I don't think I want either of those things.” Before she walks out of sight and seemingly turns into a tree.
It made me wonder whether this idea of everything becoming one was so terrifying? Is it perhaps the inevitable future of the world?
And then on my second watch I found myself so enthralled with Portman and Isaac’s performances that I couldn’t help focusing on their characters’ relationship. What were its problems and successes? And why does it seem as if their relationship was doomed to this fate from the start?
Annihilation is a film I could write about forever. It is filled with such a high quality of creativeness and passion for the project and cinema itself. It is thrilling, emotional, terrifying, beautiful, meditative and unendingly watchable, all at the same time. And it is a film that will both challenge existing ideas and introduce new ideas about life, about cinema, about people, about nature. It is a masterpiece.
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