Aniquilation rotten tom movie#

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. It's an imperfect, but wildly original sci-fi film that still deserves attention.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. It's wildly original, and damn it all it takes risks and we need that in our sci-fi. I really can't deny I was genuinely intrigued the whole way through, and there were some scenes (especially one with a bear) that I was completely gripped by. There is an amazing dreamlike quality captured both in the visuals and the narrative that really is amazing. One moment it'll be disturbing and awful, the next it will be amazing and dreamlike, and that's kind of the point. But on the other hand, god damn is it beautiful and spooky and horrifying and wonderful and just so much.

Aniquilation rotten tom movie#

It's weird choices like that which I can't ignore and keep this movie from perfection.

To the latter, we know from the get-go that Natalie Portman is the only survivor of the expedition through a narrative through line of her telling this story to scientists, which does dissolve some of the tension. There's some weird pacing choices, sometimes for the better making you feel as disjointed as the characters and not knowing what to expect, but other times there are moments that seem to drag in weird ways or weird bits of explanation.

Starting as a moody sci-fi and taking turns into horror and ending in a realm akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Annihilation is a weird journey.