It turns out that the scientific team is able to figure out a great deal about what’s going on inside-species of plants and animals that have never been seen before, and even seem to be combinations of species that seem to be merging in a way that makes Lena uneasy. There, it created a fluid, shimmering wall around it that is expanding to the point where it has no taken over a small town and a nearby swamp, but will soon be much more of an issue.īefore Kane’s mysterious re-appearance, no one who has gone into The Shimmer has come back out, and it soon becomes clear that the growing field isn’t the danger, but rather something inside that is cause for concern. They’re following in the footsteps of previous, all-military (and presumably all-male) missions inside what is being called an environmental disaster area, but in fact is the result of something dropping from space and landing near a coastal lighthouse. The other members of the team are played by Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin”), Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson ( Thor: Ragnarok). Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a psychologist, who is assembling an all-female group that includes an anthropologist, a surveyor, a linguist, and now Lena, who has both the military and scientific skills to be a great asset to the team. It reveals a handful of truly horrifying truths about both Kane’s mission, as well as a new one being arranged by Dr. This time, Lena is also allowed to accompany him.Īnnihilation is told in a non-linear fashion, slowly pealing back the layers of story until a picture becomes more and more in focus. Not long after he arrives, people in black vans arrive to take him away. He returns unannounced one day, a changed man with no memory of the details of where he’s been. ![]() His latest mission seems to have an added silence about it, and when he vanishes for a year, she begin to fear the worst. The long absences and forbidden topics in their marriage have taken their toll, but they’re trying to make it work. Image courtesy of Paramount PicturesĪ downright gloomy Natalie Portman plays Lena, a former soldier who switched gears to become a biologist (she’s now a professor at John Hopkins), while her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) stayed in the military and often carries out missions for long stretches that he can’t tell Lena about. The perfect cross section of these two approaches to sci fi was writer-director Alex Garland’s previous film Ex Machina, which tackled questions about humanity, manipulation and unbridled Ego.īut his second film as a director (Garland also wrote such modern classics as 28 Days Later… and Sunshine), Annihilation, is a different beast altogether in that it takes a largely scientific approach to a possible alien invasion, not unlike 2016’s Arrival (but without the communication angle). Here’s hoping that we have enough Star Wars and superhero movies in our yearly science-fiction regimen to satiate that base-level need, and that there’s room in our movie diets for something a little less visually flashy but far more thought provoking and mentally stimulating.
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