Annihilation (2018)
Directed by Alex
Garland
Paramount, 115
minutes, R (violence, brief sexuality)
★★★
There are three-star (of five) films that are middle of the
pack because they only partially live up to their promise, and there are
three-star films that fall short because they take risks that don’t quite pan
out. Annihilation falls into the
second category.
The horror writer H.P. Lovecraft recognized that one of the
most terrifying things imaginable is, in fact, the unimaginable—those unseen terrors known mainly though their impact,
not face-to-face confrontations. These tap into existential dread in ways that
make garden-variety angst seem like therapy. Parts of Annihilation are among the most frightening things I’ve witnessed
on the screen in some time. (Disclaimer: I usually avoid horror films.)
Annihilation is
set somewhere along the Southern Gulf Coast. We meet Lena (Natalie Portman) and
her Army Special Forces husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), just as he is to be
deployed for a classified mission so secret he can’t tell Lena anything about
it. He does not return and is considered KIA, until about a year later when he
shows up in the kitchen. Something, though, is terribly amiss. He is distant,
can't explain how he got back, and is unsure of everything. A few nights later,
Kane convulses and blood dribbles from his mouth. As Lena rushes him toward the
hospital, a military convoy surrounds the ambulance, seizes Kane, and drives
off.
Sometime later, Lena, a cellular biology professor and
former Army officer, sees Kane again on life support at Area X. Thus begins a
deeper foray into terror. Lena meets psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason-Leigh),
who introduces Lena to The Shimmer, a refracted light phenomenon that bathes
the swamp just beyond the compound in eerie light. She learns that numerous
teams have gone into The Shimmer, but only Kane has ever returned from it.
Ventress recruits Lena to be part of an all-female research team to enter The
Shimmer to see if they can succeed where male warriors failed. No, this is not
a simplistic girls-kick-ass film where intuition and female friendship save the
day. In fact, no one on the team trusts anyone else, and only Ventress knows
that Kane is Lena’s husband.
The growing Shimmer threatens to cause the namesake
annihilation of human life. The team learns one thing early on: it also alters
DNA; some things copy in mirror images, others mutate. What no one knows is how
it does that or what it is. Is it a rip in the time-space continuum, a portal
to another dimension, some energy pulse from outside the galaxy, or the
vanguard of an alien invasion? What, for instance, causes an alligator to grow
to an enormous size and have a double row of teeth, as if hybridized with a
shark?
Annihilation is a
tense horror film wrapped in a mystery. Dangers lurk around each bend and grow
more serious the closer team members move toward a seaside lighthouse, the
center of the phenomenon. Previous teams have left behind video memory cards
that terrify more than they enlighten, including footage of a man being held
down as Kane uses his knife to cut open his abdomen. Does the team see
something, or was it just a trick of the light? Other clues suggest that
something is mirroring human behavior and movements as well as altering human DNA.
To say more would be to venture into spoiler terrain. Let’s just say that very unsettling
and odd things happen to the five women.
The film is at its nail-biting best when we are like the
characters: unaware of what’s going on. The reveal will make your heart race,
but the next day it feels like a let down. Why? Because the fog is always
scariest when you don’t know what’s behind it. At times the film evokes Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003); at others, an apocalyptic Bosch
painting. I, however, wished that
director Alex Garland had trusted imagination to the very end.
In the end, though, the film's visual style—heavy on
fluorescent green and hazy prismatic colors—surpasses the script. Despite a
very discomforting (and ambiguous) final scene, the more Annihilation reveals, the less interesting it becomes—another way
of saving that the journey is more convincing than the destination. It's a heck
of a journey, though.
This film also stars Tuva Novotny, Josie Radek, and Tessa
Thompson.
Rob Weir
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