Needless to say, those not willing to put in the effort to work through its many layers will be left sorely disappointed and needn't bother at all. However, it's this very ambiguous approach that contributes to the film's allure and fascinating premise. Like Stalker, Annihilation refuses to provide easy answers and some might even leave the film frustrated with its ambiguity. Tarkovsky's film has a more reflective, philosophical tone to it whereas Garland explores a more scientific nature but the two are certainly bedfellows. Having recently caught up with that, I can definitely see the resemblance. Harbouring the weighty themes of grief, suicide and self-destruction, Garland borrows heavily from the paranoia of John Carpenter's The Thing and also channels cancer as its psychological device, while many have compared it to Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 metaphysical film, Stalker.
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I've seen genre horrors that have failed to capture half of this films palpable feeling of dread and Garland knows exactly how to handle it's unsettling moments while aided with a hugely effective score by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury.
While it's beautifully shot by cinematographer Rob Hardy and boasts some visually stunning scenes it also has atmosphere in abundance. It's this very concept that makes Garland's film a terrifying experience. Everything refracts as our planet, as we know it, is in the process of evolving into something else entirely. There are plants that share human DNA and result in growths of eerie, man-like tree structures and animals that retain and replicate the screams of the victims they've killed. What's most apparent, though, is Garland's masterful control of pace and mood and it's his attention to these elements that provide the film with genuinely nightmarish possibilities.Īrea X is a foreboding, inhospitable land where the laws of physics and nature have turned in on themselves as the environment mutates with new and fascinating results. When the film does provide some answers, it only opens it up to even more questions and therein lies the craftsmanship and intrigue of this abstract sci-fi fantasy. Such is Garland's restrained approach, we are kept very much at arms length about what exactly is going as each of these chapters make little sense. During the expedition, Lena discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures that threatens everything we have come to know about science and evolution and threatens not only her life but also her sanity.īased on the first book in the "Southern Reach" trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer we are drip fed the events and conundrum of Annihilation in the three stages of the characters' exploration: Area X, The Shimmer and The Lighthouse. Plot: Lena (Natalie Portman), a cellular biologist and former soldier, joins an expedition to uncover what happened to her husband Kane (Oscar Issac) who disappeared during a mission inside Area X - a swampland across the Florida coastline that was hit by a meteor and is now a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that blocks all contact with the outside world. One could even argue that it's his best work yet. On this evidence, it's fair to say that Garland has went from strength to strength and his sophomore film, Annihilation, continues that trend. Beginning his career as an author and responsible for the source material of Danny Boyle's The Beach in 2000, Alex Garland then directly ventured into the film industry by doing screenplay's - again with Boyle on 28 Days Later and Sunshine - before he eventually took the reigns himself by making his directorial debut with the magnificent science fiction film Ex Machina in 2014.
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