Annihilation (2018)
A failed attempt to expand the zeitgeist of Solaris.
Presentation:
A premise adjacent to the plot of Solaris, a meteor comes to earth hitting a lighthouse and creating a mysterious veiled barrier where no one comes back. So they send an all female group with soldiers and scientists in order to get to the bottom of it. The visuals are quite mesmerizing utilizing anamorphic aberrations to capture the psychedelic and hypnotic trance of the mysterious phenomenon. Natalie Portman does her best in this film, but the rest of the cast falls very flat. Moreover, in attempt to maintain artistic ambiguity, the script ends up being incomprehensible while also not capturing the philosophical ethos of existentialism.
Analysis:
The shimmer is both a metaphor and literal accelerant of humanities self destruction. Each of them die in their own ways, whether it's aging, succumbing to the environment, killed by a mutated animal or suicide. People are their own worst enemy, illustrated by Portman's doppleganger at the end, which doesn't allow her to cross. But humans will always have a warped reality and never accept their flaws until it's too late. It could also be interpreted that the scene where the shimmer lands looks quite similar to a nuclear wardhead. This would also symbolize mankind's tendency for self destruction. Whether it's guilt, pain, or suffering, it all rots away at us until we decay into something unrecognizable to our initial intentions. It's key to note that the shimmer doesn't seem particularly hostile or wanting to destroy, but to simply change the environment. So when Portman leaves to run away and burn everything, her mirrored double does the same. This is the reasoning for the title of the film. Just like cancer and genetic mutation which are repeated motifs, change is the way of humanity regardless of whether it's toward life or our annihilation.
Conclusion:
This failed movie placed Alex Garland into movie jail, an expensive disaster that is very hard to appreciate with mediocre effects particularly for its climatic sequences. It’s messy, confusing and lacks a cohesive direction to make the psychological themes digestible, which is a shame because some of the ideas could be really good were it not for abysmal execution. Alex Garland is known for being a great writer, but the vision completely falls apart here. It can only be explained that some higher producer must have intervened in the creative direction of this film to disrupt the continuity of a psychological masterpiece if only the pieces aligned together. Normally bad movies have plot holes, in this film there are simply vast holes in the story.
Recommendations
Welcome to uncanny valley.