This is the first in what will hopefully be a new series called "What's The Deal With", where I do retrospective reviews on movies, books and music that I think are interesting and have things about them that are worth talking about in more detail. This gives me a bit more freedom to talk a bit about some of my favourite media outside of the new releases, although I will definitely still be doing that too.
So, what's the deal with Annihilation?
Annihilation is the second feature film from writer director Alex Garland, who not only previously brought us Ex Machina, one of the better science fiction films of the decade, but has also left his mark as purely a writer with work such as his novel The Beach, and films like 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go and Sunshine. It feel slightly strange saying that Annihilation is only his second feature as director, given how big his influence already is in the world of film, and that says something about the power he has behind the camera.
The film was released in 2018, in what can only be described as a turn of events that makes your eyes go crossed the more you think about it. It went through production fully intended for a theatrical release, but by the time it was finished and studio execs got a look at the final cut, they got cold feet about it and decided to send it off to Netflix instead of getting a wide theatrical release, where they thought it would go over mainstream audiences heads and bore the majority of people who went to see it. It did get a theatrical release in the United States, however, where it did indeed bomb financially. I did some thinking about this, and it kind of bothers me that it got a theatrical release in the one region that is traditionally most selective and narrow about the sort of films that become successful - it feels like the decision that would have made the most sense would be a Netflix release in the States, and a limited release in other regions - Europe, Asia, etc. - before making a further decision to either pull back to Netflix or to give it a wider release. And my reasonings for this thinking are not simply because I really like this movie - which I do.
What baffles me most about this film's failure is how perfectly it seemed to fit the mould that culture was (and still is, to some degree) demanding in popular cinema. Annihilation was released at the height of the public push for diversity within film. Whether it be about the lack of female lead roles in popular cinema, the need for racial diversity in film, or the push for LGBTQI+ representation in film, Annihilation ticks all of those boxes. Films like Black Panther and Ghostbusters (2016) were being praised for bringing this diversity to the screen, and yet Annihilation, a film lead by five women, including representation of both racial and sexual diversity, flops. Not only is Annihilation a film that is led by women, but it is a film that is led by smart women. There are no queef jokes, but instead they are treated like the badass, capable, self-sufficient, deeply flawed and nuanced characters that they are. And it really makes me sad, because amongst all of these headlines about "this is the movie we need right now" (Black Panther, Hidden Figures, I Tonya, A Wrinkle In Time, Fate of the Furious and Pitch Perfect 3 all got this label in one article or another), Annihilation was that on a silver platter. And no one saw it.
I'm going to quickly jump in to clarify what my point here is. I don't think that this is a fantastic film simply because it is led by women. I do think, however, that it is a real shame that this film didn't reach the wide theatre audience it deserved, and probably would have found were it released in the '70s or '80s, given how it so blatantly checked those cultural boxes that people were wanting checked at the time of its release. A cynical reading of this might be to say that people don't want to see a movie they have to think about, or a movie that takes them outside of their comfort zones, but rather a movie that they know what they are going to get out of, and a movie that makes them feel safe all the way throughout. It is a deeply satisfying film, but not in the way that so many huge, multiplex blockbusters aim to be these days - characters with easily identifiable traits, a recognisable and easily understood threat, low stakes and a neat and tidy resolution. Simply by looking at the films that are the most successful at the box office, it seems like audiences just want to know what they are going to watch before they watch it. Annihilation isn't a sequel, a remake, or a comic-book adaptation. It is a loose retelling of a niche weird-fiction novel that while popular within its sphere was by no means widely popular (although it has jumped in popularity in the aftermath of this film), and it never once stops to check if the audience are keeping up. And this is maybe one of the things that I love about Annihilation - it treats its audience like they're smart enough to keep up.
So now that I've unpacked a bit of its cultural history (let's be honest, now that I've ranted), is it actually good? Hell yes it is. Let me set it up for you a bit incase you haven't seen it or you need refreshing. Oh, and I will be spoiling the film, so if you haven't seen it and you don't want it spoiled you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway.
At the beginning of the film we are shown an alien presence crashing to earth, which then begins to gradually spread outwards in the form of the shimmer, a shiny, bubble-like border into which people have been sent, but no one has returned from. Natalie Portman's husband, played by Oscar Isaac was one of the men who had gone in and never returned, and one year after his disappearance he mysteriously returns to her, changed. Set on finding out what is inside the shimmer and what happened to her husband, she joins a group of female scientists, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny, in an expedition into the shimmer. It is not lost on anyone that no one has ever returned from the shimmer - except now recently Oscar Isaac - and we gradually realise that all of these women have reasons for taking up what is essentially a suicide mission.
What follows is pure ideas-driven science fiction, inflected with genuine dread and Cronenberg-esque body horror. They start to discover that much like the refraction of light in the soapy, bubble-like border of the shimmer, everything else is refracted inside this strange area that has been slowly overrun by nature, aided by alien influence. Everything down to time and cells. There is a wonderful metaphor to the entire construct of the film, set up by three very specific mentions of cancer and cancer cells in the film. Jennifer Jason Leigh's character has cancer, Natalie Portman's character is doing a lecture on cancer cells early in the film, and Tuva Novotny's character's daughter was taken by leukemia, cancer of the blood. The audience come to realise, as do the characters, that this alien presence doesn't want anything, in the way that we need to assign purpose to actions as humans. It is not after something. It just is. Much like cancer. In fact, it has been suggested that the alien presence in Annihilation is basically cancer, but on a global, biological scale.
There are other symbols and themes that run deep through the film, like that of the ouroboros - the snake eating itself. It appears as a tattoo on one character, and then mysteriously again on another character later when it was not there previously, and goes a long way at hinting towards major themes. Like I said earlier, it is discovered that they all have their reasons for going into the shimmer. It is implied that Oscar Isaac went in earlier because he had discovered Natalie Portman was cheating on him. Jennifer Jason Leigh has cancer and so has nothing to loose. Through the discovery of scars on Tessa Thompson's arms it is revealed that perhaps her mental illness is part of what led her to the mission. Gina Rodriguez past as a former addict, and Tuva Novotny's loss of her child also are implied to be the reasons for their choosing to come on a suicide mission. All of them are outward expressions of humanity's hidden desire for self-destruction - annihilation. The splitting of cells is also a visual metaphor that seems to be tied to Natalie Portman's character too, perhaps linking the literal splitting of cells to the way her infidelity split up her marriage. I don't want to go too much further, because I don't want to ruin some of the more satisfying thematic revelations that are waiting to be found in the film.
The most surprising thing about the film that I was not expecting was the level to which it borrowed from horror cinema. It's no surprise to regular readers that I love horror cinema as much as I do science fiction, and so you can imagine my delight (mixed with terror and disgust, naturally) at the scene with the mutated bear. Or at seeing bodies broken open upon walls by strangely beautiful biological patches of what looks like modern art. Or the scene in the trailer (which I hadn't seen beforehand) of the man's insides slithering around like a snake (eating itself?). But most importantly, the horror found in the film is all linked to and informed by the science fiction basis of the story - more specifically, the idea of an alien biological cancer causing cells and DNA to mutate and change. It is wonderful, and that bear scene is one of the most unsettling I've seen in a film in the last few years.
What likely was the deal-breaker for studios deciding whether or not to give Annihilation a wide theatrical release is the final third of the movie. In one of the most strange, abstract and potentially impenetrable final acts of a big budget film that decade, the action takes place largely without dialogue or outside direction at just what the hell is going on. There was a point at which I thought I had inexplicably started watching a David Lynch film, with its use of doppelgängers, strange imagery and its use of sound. The easy way of making this film appeal to a wider audience would be to explain exactly what is happening in this sequence, but instead Alex Garland allowed the events to unravel naturally and without unnecessary explanation. What this means is that we get one of the most truly alien representations of an alien on film. I think this is one of the most impressive things about Annihilation - the alien is just as unknown to us at the end as it was at the start. There is no explanation given because there is none to be found. It truly is alien, in the actual literal sense of the word, and that is something very special.
It should come to no surprise to you that I absolutely recommend Annihilation, in all of its confusing, shocking, visually stunning and gory glory. It's a film that really should have been seen by more people, but just don't expect to know exactly what happened after your first viewing. Expect to be breathless and excited to go back and watch it again to uncover more of its secrets. Because I have seen the film five or six times now, and I still find new things in it. And it's on Netflix, so just go watch it anyway!
So, what's the deal with Annihilation?
Annihilation is the second feature film from writer director Alex Garland, who not only previously brought us Ex Machina, one of the better science fiction films of the decade, but has also left his mark as purely a writer with work such as his novel The Beach, and films like 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go and Sunshine. It feel slightly strange saying that Annihilation is only his second feature as director, given how big his influence already is in the world of film, and that says something about the power he has behind the camera.
The film was released in 2018, in what can only be described as a turn of events that makes your eyes go crossed the more you think about it. It went through production fully intended for a theatrical release, but by the time it was finished and studio execs got a look at the final cut, they got cold feet about it and decided to send it off to Netflix instead of getting a wide theatrical release, where they thought it would go over mainstream audiences heads and bore the majority of people who went to see it. It did get a theatrical release in the United States, however, where it did indeed bomb financially. I did some thinking about this, and it kind of bothers me that it got a theatrical release in the one region that is traditionally most selective and narrow about the sort of films that become successful - it feels like the decision that would have made the most sense would be a Netflix release in the States, and a limited release in other regions - Europe, Asia, etc. - before making a further decision to either pull back to Netflix or to give it a wider release. And my reasonings for this thinking are not simply because I really like this movie - which I do.
What baffles me most about this film's failure is how perfectly it seemed to fit the mould that culture was (and still is, to some degree) demanding in popular cinema. Annihilation was released at the height of the public push for diversity within film. Whether it be about the lack of female lead roles in popular cinema, the need for racial diversity in film, or the push for LGBTQI+ representation in film, Annihilation ticks all of those boxes. Films like Black Panther and Ghostbusters (2016) were being praised for bringing this diversity to the screen, and yet Annihilation, a film lead by five women, including representation of both racial and sexual diversity, flops. Not only is Annihilation a film that is led by women, but it is a film that is led by smart women. There are no queef jokes, but instead they are treated like the badass, capable, self-sufficient, deeply flawed and nuanced characters that they are. And it really makes me sad, because amongst all of these headlines about "this is the movie we need right now" (Black Panther, Hidden Figures, I Tonya, A Wrinkle In Time, Fate of the Furious and Pitch Perfect 3 all got this label in one article or another), Annihilation was that on a silver platter. And no one saw it.
I'm going to quickly jump in to clarify what my point here is. I don't think that this is a fantastic film simply because it is led by women. I do think, however, that it is a real shame that this film didn't reach the wide theatre audience it deserved, and probably would have found were it released in the '70s or '80s, given how it so blatantly checked those cultural boxes that people were wanting checked at the time of its release. A cynical reading of this might be to say that people don't want to see a movie they have to think about, or a movie that takes them outside of their comfort zones, but rather a movie that they know what they are going to get out of, and a movie that makes them feel safe all the way throughout. It is a deeply satisfying film, but not in the way that so many huge, multiplex blockbusters aim to be these days - characters with easily identifiable traits, a recognisable and easily understood threat, low stakes and a neat and tidy resolution. Simply by looking at the films that are the most successful at the box office, it seems like audiences just want to know what they are going to watch before they watch it. Annihilation isn't a sequel, a remake, or a comic-book adaptation. It is a loose retelling of a niche weird-fiction novel that while popular within its sphere was by no means widely popular (although it has jumped in popularity in the aftermath of this film), and it never once stops to check if the audience are keeping up. And this is maybe one of the things that I love about Annihilation - it treats its audience like they're smart enough to keep up.
So now that I've unpacked a bit of its cultural history (let's be honest, now that I've ranted), is it actually good? Hell yes it is. Let me set it up for you a bit incase you haven't seen it or you need refreshing. Oh, and I will be spoiling the film, so if you haven't seen it and you don't want it spoiled you probably shouldn't be reading this anyway.
At the beginning of the film we are shown an alien presence crashing to earth, which then begins to gradually spread outwards in the form of the shimmer, a shiny, bubble-like border into which people have been sent, but no one has returned from. Natalie Portman's husband, played by Oscar Isaac was one of the men who had gone in and never returned, and one year after his disappearance he mysteriously returns to her, changed. Set on finding out what is inside the shimmer and what happened to her husband, she joins a group of female scientists, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez and Tuva Novotny, in an expedition into the shimmer. It is not lost on anyone that no one has ever returned from the shimmer - except now recently Oscar Isaac - and we gradually realise that all of these women have reasons for taking up what is essentially a suicide mission.
What follows is pure ideas-driven science fiction, inflected with genuine dread and Cronenberg-esque body horror. They start to discover that much like the refraction of light in the soapy, bubble-like border of the shimmer, everything else is refracted inside this strange area that has been slowly overrun by nature, aided by alien influence. Everything down to time and cells. There is a wonderful metaphor to the entire construct of the film, set up by three very specific mentions of cancer and cancer cells in the film. Jennifer Jason Leigh's character has cancer, Natalie Portman's character is doing a lecture on cancer cells early in the film, and Tuva Novotny's character's daughter was taken by leukemia, cancer of the blood. The audience come to realise, as do the characters, that this alien presence doesn't want anything, in the way that we need to assign purpose to actions as humans. It is not after something. It just is. Much like cancer. In fact, it has been suggested that the alien presence in Annihilation is basically cancer, but on a global, biological scale.
There are other symbols and themes that run deep through the film, like that of the ouroboros - the snake eating itself. It appears as a tattoo on one character, and then mysteriously again on another character later when it was not there previously, and goes a long way at hinting towards major themes. Like I said earlier, it is discovered that they all have their reasons for going into the shimmer. It is implied that Oscar Isaac went in earlier because he had discovered Natalie Portman was cheating on him. Jennifer Jason Leigh has cancer and so has nothing to loose. Through the discovery of scars on Tessa Thompson's arms it is revealed that perhaps her mental illness is part of what led her to the mission. Gina Rodriguez past as a former addict, and Tuva Novotny's loss of her child also are implied to be the reasons for their choosing to come on a suicide mission. All of them are outward expressions of humanity's hidden desire for self-destruction - annihilation. The splitting of cells is also a visual metaphor that seems to be tied to Natalie Portman's character too, perhaps linking the literal splitting of cells to the way her infidelity split up her marriage. I don't want to go too much further, because I don't want to ruin some of the more satisfying thematic revelations that are waiting to be found in the film.
The most surprising thing about the film that I was not expecting was the level to which it borrowed from horror cinema. It's no surprise to regular readers that I love horror cinema as much as I do science fiction, and so you can imagine my delight (mixed with terror and disgust, naturally) at the scene with the mutated bear. Or at seeing bodies broken open upon walls by strangely beautiful biological patches of what looks like modern art. Or the scene in the trailer (which I hadn't seen beforehand) of the man's insides slithering around like a snake (eating itself?). But most importantly, the horror found in the film is all linked to and informed by the science fiction basis of the story - more specifically, the idea of an alien biological cancer causing cells and DNA to mutate and change. It is wonderful, and that bear scene is one of the most unsettling I've seen in a film in the last few years.
What likely was the deal-breaker for studios deciding whether or not to give Annihilation a wide theatrical release is the final third of the movie. In one of the most strange, abstract and potentially impenetrable final acts of a big budget film that decade, the action takes place largely without dialogue or outside direction at just what the hell is going on. There was a point at which I thought I had inexplicably started watching a David Lynch film, with its use of doppelgängers, strange imagery and its use of sound. The easy way of making this film appeal to a wider audience would be to explain exactly what is happening in this sequence, but instead Alex Garland allowed the events to unravel naturally and without unnecessary explanation. What this means is that we get one of the most truly alien representations of an alien on film. I think this is one of the most impressive things about Annihilation - the alien is just as unknown to us at the end as it was at the start. There is no explanation given because there is none to be found. It truly is alien, in the actual literal sense of the word, and that is something very special.
It should come to no surprise to you that I absolutely recommend Annihilation, in all of its confusing, shocking, visually stunning and gory glory. It's a film that really should have been seen by more people, but just don't expect to know exactly what happened after your first viewing. Expect to be breathless and excited to go back and watch it again to uncover more of its secrets. Because I have seen the film five or six times now, and I still find new things in it. And it's on Netflix, so just go watch it anyway!
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