Annihilation (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Annihilation (2018) – A. Garland

Hahahahahahaha – what just happened?  Alex Garland’s follow up to Ex Machina (2014) is another sci-fi flick that echoes Tarkovsky’s Stalker (because there is a mysterious and dangerous zone called the “Shimmer” that the characters enter) but also hews close to certain horror genre conventions (characters are picked off one-by-one – we know this from the start).  Natalie Portman plays the biologist/geneticist whose military husband (Oscar Isaac) disappears on a secret mission (to the Shimmer, of course) – when he returns, damaged, she decides to join a subsequent party of women scientists (kudos to the writer-director) who are the next to venture to the lighthouse which is the epicentre of the Shimmer (and where a meteorite seems to have struck).  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Dr Ventress, a psychologist who is the team leader, and Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson round out the team.  As they trudge through the forest, I’m thinking Predator (1987) – however, things are far more psychedelic than that.  Plants and animals have all mutated – and our heroes may be mutating too.  Garland and his production team use CGI to good effect to make a bizarro (yes, lysergic) world that comes complete with some mumbo-jumbo scientific explanations.  Things do escalate to ultra-weird levels (and ultra-incomprehensible) but you can just lie back and let the images wash over you.  Perhaps there is something deeper here – a meditation on Thanatos or a puzzle about what or who is real and what or who is not – but figuring it out doesn’t really feel worth it to me.  A trippy but awkward mix of familiar genre moves and cracked philosophizing.