Annihilation (2018)

Lena is a cellular biologist and a former US Army soldier who teaches at a university. Her husband Kane, a current Army Special Forces soldier, has been on a mission for years and comes back injured and the only survivor of his team. He had gone into the "Shimmer," an expanding anomaly in an evacuated location. After being debriefed, Lena decides to volunteer to be in the next group investigate its mysteries.

Annihilation is a mind bending sci-fi/horror film told in a disjointed way. The narrative intersperses flashbacks to fill in character background and motivation. The most intriguing thing about the film is the Shimmer itself and how it changes the world inside it. The changes are both beautiful, eerie, and dangerous. At first, all they notice is how flowers are bursting from everywhere in all configurations and mutations even though they shouldn't be blooming together in that season. The animals are mostly nightmare fuel. The first animal seen is a deer with flowers blooming from its antlers. A bit eerie, but beautiful and not dangerous. The next one is a crocodile fused with a shark, combining the most frightening things about both animals. Nothing compares to the half zombie bear that mimics human screams. The horror elements of this film are pitch perfect. I felt frozen in my seat as the bear walked around the house with the women hiding in it.

The female cast is not well treated by the film. They are all supposedly there because they have essentially given up on life and I didn't really feel that at all. Josie is revealed to self harm, but that doesn't necessarily translate to being suicidal. All of these women have experienced awful things, but are shown to just give up in the face of it instead of showing the exploration as a sign of strength. The audience really didn't get a chance to get to know them much. This group of women is also only exploring because all other qualified groups have died and that isn't a great implication either. The human transformations near the end of the film were too fast and stretched believability

The main concept of the film is amazing and well done, but I felt that it fell apart in the end. I like the concept of an alien that harms us without even meaning to. There's no malice or or plan to take over Earth. It didn't even seem to realize its effect on the beings here. The Shimmer itself acts like a prism and mixes animal, plant, and human works in concept as well as in practice and visuals. The lone alien shown at the end of the film is interesting, but not as well done as the other creatures. The sound design in that scene also practically massacred by ears. It's a high pitched whine that's hard to escape in a movie theater with such a loud sound system. I get what they were trying to do, but it's not necessary to hurt your audience.

Annihilation is a very different science fiction film that shows an alien force changing and melding animals, plants, and humans. The concepts and products of this are intensely interesting, but I felt the characters were pretty awfully treated in the film for what I saw they were. The horror elements are on point, especially when the fate of Kane's team is shown and the nightmarish animal amalgamations. I am definitely interested in reading the book to compare the differences and I would see another of these films if the next book is made into a film.

My rating: 3.5/5 fishmuffins