Review: Annihilation

In the opening scene of Annihilation, we see Lena, played by Natalie Portman, being interrogated in a quarantined chamber by another scientist ( Benedict Wong) who is in clad in a hazmat suit. These sessions are shown in parts throughout the movie, linking the present with the past incidents. To most of the questions thrown at her, Lena answers with a thoughtful “I don’t know”. Likewise, most questions thrown to a casual viewer of the Annihilation about the movie will probably receive the same answer. Alex Garland in his second directorial venture after Ex Machina, has richly crafted an enigma of a movie.

Though it can be classified as a sci-fi adventure movie with a touch of horror, the themes infused in it run deeper from the surface and need some amount of afterthought or multiple viewings to grasp. Garland has made certain conceptual alterations to the source of the movie, a novel by Jeff VanderMeer and the resultant movie is something that general audiences will walk away from and thinking audiences will revel in while theorizing about the questions that are left unanswered.

The movie revolves around Lena, who is a biologist with an army background. Her husband Kane, an army man, has been missing in action for over a year and just when she has given him up for dead he returns to their home. Lena, initially overjoyed, finds out that her husband is a changed man and soon he falls seriously ill. On the way to the hospital they are stopped by agents and are taken to a facility called Area X. Lena comes to know from Dr.Ventress, (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a psychologist, about a situation where a strange phenomenon termed the “Shimmer” is slowly expanding and engulfing the landmass. Her husband was a part of the team that was sent into the Shimmer to investigate and he is the only one who has come back. Other teams have tried to reach the source of the Shimmer, which is a lighthouse, but none has come back.

Lena then joins a mission comprising of an all-women team, led by Dr. Ventress to venture into the Shimmer and reach the lighthouse where it all started after a meteor impact three years ago. The other members are Anya (Gina Rodriguez) a paramedic, Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny) a geomorphologist and Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) physicist. The five-member team crosses the soap bubble-like perimeter wall of the Shimmer and enters a world where the flow of time is not the same as in the outer world. At this point, the movie ventures into the horror zone with the team finding strange mutations that the being brought about into all life forms inside the Shimmer. They also find some records about the earlier groups that entered the Shimmer. The movie portrays this strange world beautifully in fine detail. The depiction of a familiar world getting transformed into something unknown is often fascinating. Certain images like the one of mutated moss-like elements engulfing a human body plastered to a wall are genuinely creepy.

We come to know a few details about the backgrounds of these women as we move ahead through the Shimmer with them. The common point that ties all of them is that they all have past issues buried deep within them. The group realizes that the Shimmer not only mutates living cells but can also impact the psychological states of human beings. As the team moves deeper, things do not go as planned and after multiple encounters with creatures of the strange zone, Lena is finally able to reach the lighthouse. The events in the lighthouse are designed in line with the director’s vision for the main thematic elements of the story. The inner battle that one may face within oneself which may lead to self annihilation, resulting in a complete change of the being is one aspect of the events. In the end, Lena emerges after an encounter with the core element of the Shimmer but she cannot escape the effects the journey has on her physical and mental self.

The annihilation of the self is something that has been the goal of sages and mystics through all ages. If one has the time to look deep and think about the final scenes that were depicted, multiple interpretations can be drawn. Garland was fully aware that his style of storytelling would not make the film appealing to the majority movie moviegoers and refused to offer easy answers. Life has more unknown elements than known and the more we look for logical explanations for every aspect of life, the more we come to the borders of our own limitations.

It is all right for a movie to follow the same pattern but the problem with Annihilation is that the emotional core of the narrative feels rather hollow. The viewer never feels connected to the pain and sorrow that resides in each character. The flashbacks or the dialogues that offer us their backstories, seem forced into the act at times and make one wonder how can a team of mentally injured people be sent for such an important mission. When the foundations of the narrative are left weak, loading it with esoteric philosophical concepts can lead to an unbalance in the entire structure.

In terms of performance, all the lead actors fill their roles admirably. Natalie Portman does some of the best work of her career with the soft-spoken decisiveness she shows as Lena. After Thor : Ragnarok, Tessa Thompson appears in a totally different mode but she is equally effective. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gina Rodriguez do full justice to their roles. It is Oscar Issac who has nothing much to do in the role of Kane and his part seems superficial in some ways.

The plot moves fast as the director keeps things quite tight with very little flab in the script. As the group moves inside the enthralling environment of the forest with their guns in hand it often seemed to me like a new Predator movie, with a female biologist in the lead. The thrills come in this movie in a few places though it is not an action thriller in any way. Arrival, the earlier sci-fi movie from Paramount was appreciated by the masses, but Annihilation, though more rich in content does not aim to be popular. This is not a movie that offers instant gratification but surely a section of the audience definitely prefers their science fiction stories full of originality.

Annihilation is an example that movies can be made purely to communicate ideas that may be beyond the grasp of the majority. While there is genuine boldness in such a project they may not be marked as not entertainment in its true sense. Other movies of the past have been made with ambiguous endings and web-like complexity but still being satisfying as a complete whole. Garland does not follow that path and his vision leaves a strangely mutated end product; something that is not palatable for everyone.

Teleratz rating: Average