Annihilation

Annihilation was one of those movies that took me a long time to finish watching. I saw the very end of it at a movie theater once in February. I had it on DVD but didn't watch it until four weeks after I got it. When I finally watched the film I was in was awe. It was a great experience. 

Annihilation is a science fiction movie about a group of female scientists (led by Natalie Portman) who explore an alien environment called the Shimmer, which is slowly taking over more and more land over a big area.  Only one soldier came back from a ship but he in was in bad shape mentally and physically.

Once inside the shimmer, the scientists find themselves in quite a strange world, strangers in a strange land you could say. The film has some horror elements to it. First, they run into a mutated crocodile that nearly kills one of the crew. Portman opens the creatures' mouth and realizes its teeth were all different, mutated. She had first noticed these mutations on the plants. She spotted a plant that had endless variations all on the same vine. 

So what we come to know is that the Shimmer refracts DNA. The team sets up camp at the former soldier teams' base of operations. There's early signs of a mutiny early in the film. There's another monster attack (this movie has cool monsters and aliens). A giant bear strikes at the base just before dawn. It takes down a member of the crew. 

The crew gets distracted when Ventress (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) says they should move on without trying to see if their crew-mate lived or was already dead. Lena (played by Portman lies to the team and says the best way to get back out is to go farther in by going to the water's shoreline, and taking the shoreline route all the way back. It was a ploy to get them to keep moving forward. 

At some point when everybody's asleep, a member of the crew commits a mutiny and ties everybody up in a chair. She has a knife to Lena's stomach. At this point we believe she might be going mad because of the effect of the shimmer. All of a sudden we hear the lost crew member's voice, yelling, shouting, the last words of her life screamed out into the open. It was a trick of the creature, the bear that attacked them. 

The bear tears the crazed woman's throat apart and that was the end of her. The others shoot down the creature as soon as they get themselves free. They keep moving forward. Another member of the crew says she doesn't want to go in, and becomes one with plants. 

Its just Ventress and Lena at this point. They make it to the Lighthouse, the goal for the team. Lena sees a camera that shows her husband killing himself with a phosphorous grenade, only to have a doppelganger walking in front of him. She runs down into this alien-like den, which reminded me of the Aliens' (from Prometheus) home planet lairs. 

Ventress is already mutating, into something...Its shown as a sort of violent exorcism, garish and video-gameish, Ventress puking out a blob of fantastic colours to loud sound. Overly dramatic but tends to get the point across. A splotch of blood from Lena's eye falls into the colourful blob, which triggers the blob into a humanoid form. 

The alien has no face or mouth, its just like a tall silver form, like an evil Silver Surfer. It chases Lena but it isn't clear what it wants. There's a bit of a struggle but in the end Lena throws a grenade at it, and it gets engulfed in flames, destroying the creature, the Lighthouse, and dissipating the Shimmer. 

Back at base Lena and her husband Kane are reunited. Kane admits he doesn't know he's the real Kane. And when he asks if Lena is human Lena does not respond. There's a shimmer in their eyes and that ends the film. 

What a story. I was quite taken a back with how gory and violent the film was at first. The part with Kane cutting open a guy's stomach with a knife made me cringe. The bear ripping throats was a surprise. Even the crocodile was somewhat unexpected. These horror elements add a lot of spice to what is otherwise a lot of dialogue with no action. This is a good amount of spice, its not overbearing. 
 
The special effects also had a strong effect on me. The ending was such an utterly climactic scene that I plan on re-watching it again. I've seen it twice now, once in the theater and most recently on my desktop computer. Seeing that in the movie theater was amazing, it was such a memorable science fiction scene. It reminded me of 2001 A Space Odyssey.  

On the other side, the monotone direction of the film is quite great, almost intellectual in a way. By making the movie more about the characters rather than action scenes they created a much better movie than most science fiction films. Its a smart science fiction movie like Arrival, another great sci-fi movie back from 2016. I feel that because the movie was sort of slow to build up, it actually created a much better and more climactic ending.

The science fiction element (DNA mutation) to the movie was what made it so cool to me. The alien at the end suggests an all powerful presence, but it isn't clear if it is, or if it even wants anything. The fact that the film ends with us not knowing if Kane and Lena are human or alien is what gives the film its edge. You could say that the movie was trying to go all intellectual on the audience. Or that they're just trying to be clever. But I would disagree. I would say they wanted to create an ending of all endings, infinite ideas to justify conclusion. Its quite interesting once you see it and think about it. Maybe even more interesting after watching it again...

You could throw down any number of theories for what happened (regarding if they are human or not) but ultimately the audience doesn't know. That is suspense!

Watch this movie, you won't regret it.