A Reel Review: ANNIHILATION

The last time we saw writer/director Alex Garland, he brought us the brainy and most-excellent EX MACHINA, which was a closed-quarters paranoia sci-fi flick which shocked as much as it fascinated. Showing a knack for the genre, Garland returns to sci-fi, this time with ANNIHILATION, which is another closed-quarters paranoia story, only this time told on a grander scale.

Lena (Natalie Portman), is a doctor who has her military husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) return home from a secret mission with mysterious behavior. When his condition worsens, she and Kane are taken by a government agency to the outskirts of a “The Shimmer”, a quarantined bubble which is growing and taking over the Earth. Lena joins a team of scientists (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriquez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny), to enter the zone and discover the source before Earth is consumed.

Despite the grand stakes, ANNIHILATION is all Lena’s journey, which is two-fold. First, to find a way to stop The Shimmer from growing, and to solve the mystery of what happened to her husband Kane on his similar mission inside (spoiler alert – that’s what his secret mission was). Once inside, Lena and her team find themselves in a wild house-of-horrors, as they suffer from short-term memory loss, and are surrounded by revolting, mutated wild animals which take on the characteristics of anything they kill…including humans.

Garland is playing with a lot of horror elements here, as the team is stalked at night and attacked by the creatures. But at the same time he’s building a mystery in this fantastical little zone inside the bubble. With the stakes so high, Garland does manage to make it grounded; keeping Lena and her desire to save her husband always up front, while filling in the blanks of their marriage with some well-timed flashbacks. But on this journey, the mystery keeps on growing and growing, and the desire to over-explain things never bogs down the script to a fault; there’s a lot that’s left unanswered by movie’s end.

Garland flexes his muscle as a potential horror-film director with some truly frightening scenes, and the tension build-up is nicely done. The film looks beautiful as the team makes their way through the surreal landscape, and the creepy sound effects throughout the movie is unnerving. The landscapes are stunning, the creatures horrifying, although the beings we encounter near the film’s end suffer from poor CGI. With the exception of Lena, the team is all one-note and paper-thin and as disposable as a throw-away camera. And speaking of cameras, the old cliché of characters finding a video camera with a tape that explains things is used one too many times.

Acting is okay. Natalie Portman goes through a lot of torment, and her chemistry with Oscar Isaac is very good. Isaac’s role is an extended cameo, but what he does with his time is effective. The rest of the cast is forgettable with little to do.

The bulk of the film is spent building and slowly revealing, but in the last 20 minutes there is a lot of frustration to be had. The film goes for a shock ending that is very predictable and not as mind-blowing as it thinks it is, and there is way too much left unexplained; ambiguous doesn’t always mean genius. The wrap is very plain, and what’s odd is that there were hints throughout the film that there was something bigger going on, so it almost feels like the ending was changed at some point in production. It’s a frustrating destination because the journey was so good, and that type of imbalance earns ANNIHILATION a small recommendation.

BOTTOM LINE: Rent it