Annihilation (2018)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

 

#85. Annihilation (2018)

 

We SF fans love to argue the seriousness of our Genre, and we have many serious works on which to make that argument, but when one draws up lists of large portions of what books are published, Serious Product, even Serious Intent, is a minority. Seriousness far-more lacking in TV and film than prose, but I’ve seen a shift since the Millennium, a shift that has been a long-time coming.

 

We first saw this attempt at greater seriousness in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and the best work of that era was truly ground-breaking, but most of it was … well … there is such a thing a Participation Trophy.

 

There was also the issues of what the audience wanted to most. In the 1990s, serious-minded a finely executed films like 1997’s “Gattaca” were shockingly under-loved, but only a few years later, in 2001, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Vanilla Sky” made good money (well, the both also had Tom Cruise).

 

Maybe the Renascence in seriousness is because we now live in a SF World? Think about how many common Technologies that were predicted in by the “Star Trek” TV series (first aired 1966) are commonplace now. Or maybe it was just the process of learn-by-doing, and it just took us this long to get good at it.

 

This film is based loosely on a Jeff Vander Meer’s novel of the same name. As it was the first in a Trilogy, with a strong female lead, and scary action, so I’m sure the Producers had visions of the “Hunger Games” franchise (first film 2013) dancing in their heads. But Screenwriter/Director Alex Garland did something bold, he refused to read the second and third books and focused on building a stand-alone movie. I haven’t read the novel, but my gut tells me the movie is all-the-better for that boldness.

 

There were other reasons than Garland’s monomaniacal focus on a singular work: the other two books hadn’t been published yet, though they were apparently available to him. Certain aspects, like the Character’s ethnicity and backstories, are left vague in the first volume, giving him a much freer hand in the adaptation. He stated he wanted to build a script around the “feeling” he got from the book, it had a “a very strong dreamlike aspect.”

 

But, as it happens, a couple of Characters proved to be of different Ethnicities than represented in the film’s Cast and readers recognized this when the film came out after the additional volumes were published. Garland was accused of “Whitewashing.” Such bad luck.

 

Though I haven’t read this specific book, but I see echoes of older works. It shares many Plot Points and Themes with my favorite H.P. Lovecraft story, “Color Out of Space” (1927) which would seem the easiest of his works to adapt, but has been repeatedly attempted and never fully satisfactory. This unrelated film stands above all the official adaptations, much like the best “version” of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend” (1954) isn’t one of the three official adaptations (1964, 1971, & 2007), but Director George Romero’s unrelated “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).

 

It also shares a lot of Plot Points and Themes with the Brothers Strugatsky’s novel, “A Roadside Picnic” (1972), which did get a fine film treatment by Director Andrei Tarkovsky in “Stalker” (1979), but that was also a Tarkovsky, and he’s an acquired taste. Garland’s Cinematographer Rob Hardy acknowledges his debt to the Tarkovsky film, but Garland himself insists it wasn’t a significant influence.

 

It opens with a not-quite-right looking Meteor crashing near a Lighthouse in Florida. Then we’re introduced to Lena (Natalie Portman) a Biologist, being Interrogated by obscure Authorities in Biohazard Suits. The questions are unclear given we have no context

 

Lomax (Benedict Wong): “Can you describe its form?”

Lena: “No.”

Lomax: “Was it carbon-based?”

Lena: “I don’t know.”

Lomax: “What did it want?”

Lena: “I don’t think it wanted anything … It wasn’t destroying, it was changing everything, making something new.”

 

Then the film flashes-back to events after the Meteor, but before the Interrogation. After that, the film relies heavily on flashbacks, providing insight into the fatalism embraced by both Lena and her husband Kane (Oscar Issac). These two never get last names, echoing the obscure identities of the Characters in the first volume in the series.

 

By the third scene, Lena is emotionally deadened by grief. Kane, a member of US Special Forces, is long-term MIA, so her grieving process is a broken and she can’t move forward.

 

Suddenly Kane shows up, unannounced, amnesic, and in poor health. Lena calls an ambulance, it is intercepted by Military Police, and both Lena and Kane are Kidnapped and Imprisoned. This proves not to be the same Imprisonment of the earlier scene. Later in the film we see it is not about the Imprisonments, but Powerlessness against forces one can’t control or understand. As the story evolves, we learn the Military is just as Powerless and Lena.

 

During the chronologically-first, second-in-the-film, Incarceration, it becomes clear Kane is dying, so Lena is given an interesting offer.

 

So, back to the Meteor. It created an unexplainable Biohazard and the region around it that was evacuated. It’s called “Area X” has been progressively expanding. Eleven Special Forces Teams have been sent in to figure out what’s going on, but none have returned except Kane, who was part of the last one.

 

Tough-as-nails Psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and in this case, the character is never given a first name, will lead the twelfth expedition and based on the odd logic that something has to be done differently this time, this expedition will be all women instead of all men. Ventress wants Lena because of her Science background and some minimal Military Training, similar to Ventress herself, and has an obvious motive to see this all the way through.

 

That Ventress has motives more ideological than practical is unstated but obvious. A few of the other Team Members don’t offer the specific Military or Scientific skills that the Mission requires: They are a Paramedic, Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), a Physicist, Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), and Geologist, Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny). Basically, their key qualification is that they aren’t fools and are willing to take on a Suicide Mission. They all share a certain degree of fatalism and in most cases these fatalistic motives are eventually made clear through dialogue. It should be noted that the Team Leader, Ventress, a Psychologist with limited Military Training, has the least to offer the Mission, but as she’s also dying of Cancer, so she was among the most likely to volunteer.

 

The border around Area X is pulsing wall of maybe energy called the “Shimmer,” and once entering all communication with the rest of the World is lost. It also proves the demarcation point between our Reality and the one engineered by the Meteor.

 

Not long into the Quest, the Team realize they have lost all memory of their first three-days in Area X. Lena recognizes Mutated Flora defies Biological and Evolutionary logic. These are not like the Real-World Mutants surrounding Chernobyl disaster (took place in 1986 and the area around it still remains an Exclusion Zone akin to Area X) because they are all Chimera. They’re attacked by an Albino Alligator with Shark’s teeth. After that, these Mutants get progressively weirder and more dangerous.

 

Area X is sinister, overgrown, but also beautiful. Its colors are bizarre, with the Shimmer and every reflective surface within suggesting the Psychodelia of a Chemical Spill caught by light in exactly the right way. We sometimes even see this reflected in the eyes of the Protagonists. Moreover, the camera seems ‘smeared,’ something once done with Vaseline but here I’m sure a more complex digital process were involved because how it playfully encroaches and recedes with changing focus.

 

Finally, they arrive at the previous expeditions Base Camp, which is still a far journey to the Lighthouse. It is covered with colorful, bulbous vines. Lena observes, “More mutations. They’re everywhere. Malignant. Like tumors.” Inside they discover a Video Log from the prior Expedition. What it reveals is Horrific, and fore-tells the doom of each-and-every member of this Expedition.

 

The films surreal imagery is powerful: Branches full of blossoms on the antlers of deer. Human limbs melded into plant roots. An Orchard of bushes that grew into Human shapes. A Monster bear that starts to speak in the voice of the one it devoured. Production Design was by Mark Digby, Art Direction was listed separately, and with a long list of names, FX and Visual Effects were also, oddly, listed separately, and both had even longer lists of names. An odd, but telling detail, there’s a lot of location shooting in this film, and a transformed Florida is beautifully evoked – but - everything was actually shot in England. These people clearly worked overtime to create the illusion.

 

The struggle of the Scientists to make sense of it is futile. Josie hypothesizes that the Shimmer is treating all the biology within it much like light refracted when passing though water or glass. This biological refraction allows alteration of HOX genes, which are a real thing which I’m not going to pretend to fully understand, but contain the “building plan” for a growing life form (when a caterpillar goes into a cocoon, it appears to dissolve into soup, but it knows what it’s going to be, and in the end a butterfly come out). This explanation has been criticized by Real-World Scientists who nit-pic SF films, but it was also invented on-the-spot by a terrified Character, a Physicist not a Geneticist, who just realized she’s infected.

 

Says Ventress, "A religious event? An extra-terrestrial event? A higher Dimension? We have many theories and few facts."

 

The film is about Infection and unasked-for Transformation. It suggests that the limits of Science isn’t the Process, but our own inability to look beyond our Identities, and Area X alters those Identities by altering our Genes. In the closing scenes, only two have been able to escape Area X are Kane and Lena, and they have a moment together that should’ve been tender, and perhaps it was, but it was also deeply sinister:

 

Lena: "You aren't Kane, are you?"

Kane: "I don't think so. Are you Lena?"

Lena: “I don’t know.”

 

Garland first made fame as a novelist, then a sought-after Scriptwriter after “28 Days Later” (2002). His output prior to embracing film was mostly not SF, but all his produced screenplays have all been either SF, Horror, or both. His Directorial debut was the much-acclaimed SF film “Ex-Machina” (2015).

 

Garland had secured complete creative control before taking on this film project but then, because he stubbornly refused to deliver another “Hunger Games” and complaints that it was “too intellectual” and “too complicated” by the Investors, Paramount punished him with limited release and minimal marketing. He got remarkably lucky; the film was saved from financially bombing when Netflix offered $25 million for International Distribution and Streaming rights, where it proved very popular.

 

No film sequel has been announced and Garland seems uninterested in it even if it does get made.

 

Trailer:

Annihilation (2018) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures - YouTube