Annihilation review: “You’ll find yourself afraid to watch, because the film is a biolog

Netflix is getting bigger and better with its original content. It has delivered yet another big movie premier with Annihilation, that is sure to draw audiences over and over again.

Based on the best-selling and beloved novel by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation takes you on a thrilling journey from start to finish. Enter Alex Garland. The creator of The Beach and Ex Machina set out to adapt the first book of the Southern Reach Trilogy, not as a faithful scene-by-scene adaptation, but as a loose recollection of the book’s themes, motifs and characters.

Natalie Portman portrays the role of Lena, a professor, and former soldier. When her husband returns from a strange mission, she embarks on a life-altering and mind-bending adventure.

Area X is an abandoned and apparently unspoilt stretch of US coastline, held under strict quarantine by a mysterious government agency called the Southern Reach.

Into this place come the biologist and her colleagues: a surveyor, a linguist, and a psychologist. They are all women. And that is all.

Venturing into the unknown and what the driving forces behind these – doomed – explorations are, are some of the main themes of Annihilation. The story has different aspects, intertwined to take you on a strange, yet thrilling journey.

The movie looks beautiful. Annihilation transports the viewer to an alien world on Earth, mixing the familiar with the strange which delivers a gorgeously intriguing result. The visuals are like art and you’re constantly keen to see which next weird, yet strangely alluring, animal or plant will come up next.

The science behind it all, is pretty cool too.

Immediately, we begin to see how life in the Shimmer is changing at a molecular level. Overgrown and lush, it’s implied that the surrounding forest is flourishing at an abnormal rate, and the first thing to stump cellular biologist Lena is a variety of flower species all growing from the same root structure, a biological anomaly.

These oddities continue to manifest in beautiful, terrifying and straight-up unnerving ways as the film goes on, but whether you’re looking on in awe or sitting mouth agape in horror, you’ll never be disappointed when coming face to face with one of the Shimmer’s many hybridised residents. (A harrowing bear that mimics a dying team members last’ screams or a decomposed body of a Marine from a previous team). The creature design is second to none

However, this is where the movie might start losing you if you don’t pay proper attention.. You need to be paying attention the whole time because you’re provided with a lot of backstories and scientific information that is essential to follow in order for you to understand the story.

Annihilation was not made for the small screen. Its hallucinatory, fractal imagery and beautiful, overwhelmingly disjointed soundtrack were genetically engineered to assault the senses and what better weapon than a cinema screen and an ambush of Dolby Atmos surround sound?

POSITIVE POINTS: Annihilation has a predominantly female cast, which couldn’t come at a more suiting time when female empowerment is at the forefront. And man, can these females kick ass. They are tough, but only when they need to be, which doesn’t leave room for useless violence in Annihilation. The females are also portrayed as really smart, with the focus being on their abilities and who they are as people, and not their looks.

There’s not a single performance that drags. Sure, Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac are safe choices, but they don’t drag their feet for a minute, both throwing their full weight behind their roles as the protagonist biologist Lena and MIA military operative Kane.

Kiwi, actress Tessa Thompson is as sound as ever, but this time she’s playing the timid physicist Josie, and not warrior Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok.

Gina Rodriguez, who is most famous for her leading role in the television comedy Jane the Virgin. Her turn as the playful and paranoid paramedic Anya Thorensen is stunning. She turns effortlessly from a likeable and very capable crew member, to increasingly unhinged and volatile as the effects of the Shimmer begin to take hold.

Tuta Novotny’s (Shepard) surveyor and geologist Cass Shepard also stands out but doesn’t quite get the air-time (spoiler: chomp-chomp; bad bear).

Lastly, there’s the magnificent Jennifer Jason Leigh playing the team’s leader and psychologist Dr Ventress. At no fault of Leigh, Ventress’s character comes across as unnecessarily cold to begin with, and she’s forced into a semi-antagonist role where there doesn’t seem to be the need for one.

In the movie’s last third we learn more about Ventress’s motivation and her cold commitment to the mission, which becomes necessary in keeping the story rolling and gives her a little more depth.

Verdict

Annihilation couldn’t come at a better time when females are finally given the important lead roles that they deserve. Natalie Portman as Lena delivers a performance that will leave you in awe of her. The movie doesn’t only look absolutely spectacular, but it also provides a thrilling story that touches on very important themes that are relevant to the current climate.

It’s not the perfect movie. It is an engaging mix of big ideas, heavy atmosphere and raw tension (frights thrown in as a side-dish), but it eventually only yields a moderate payoff.

When a film poses more questions than answers (you know you’ll be scratching your head, asking yourself, ‘why did we watch that in the first place?’) Its a strategy that works in the films favour because it holds the ‘viewers’ attention and keeps us guessing, all the way to the mind-blowing, ‘what the hell happened at the end, scene!’

Some character motivations feel forced and unnecessarily tragic. Where the characters that were consumed before the movie’s beginning presumably went in with nothing but courage and a duty to uphold, our main crew are each given a very specific reason to enter the Shimmer. (It’s a little like a lucky dip of tragic backstories and only one or two are properly explored.) The dialogue also is a bit ropey in the second half. Some early exposition on behalf of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Dr Ventress was a false alarm for where things would eventually go.

“Annihilation” is spellbinding, eerie and disturbing, all in good ways. Director Alex Garland, who made the impressive 2014’s “Ex Machina,” once again shows he’s in complete control of his resources and a rising master.

But the film fizzles dramatically into oblivion when the ending isn’t exactly easy to grasp on first watch, mainly because it’s deliberately ambiguous.

Unlike Alex Garland’s previous film Ex Machina, everything isn’t wrapped up neatly at the end.

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4/10 STARS