3 out of 5

Directed by: Alex Garland

After I saw Memento, I was hooked on Christopher Nolan’s movies. When he was attached to Batman, I freaked; Inception was an utter triumph. Interstellar was where my fandom began to flag, though: I started to see Nolan’s projects as all thematically linked – which is interesting – but not actually “about” anything, so much as interested in ideas. That doesn’t dismiss their quality, or entertaining factors, but it detinted the rose on my glasses; movies that once seemed really smart became kinda just smartly presented, though not ultimately saying much of anything.

I’ve been kind of working backwards through Alex Garland’s career, despite pledging to follow him unto the end of the earth for writing Dredd. I suppose I was always a bit on guard from the start of his credited directorial career, with Ex Machina, as Garland seemed to be working in a sweet spot (for me) of speculative sci-fi, with the works generally praised and considered somewhat heady, and toying with themes of self and gender – all buzzwords. His filmography started to become the “I’ll get around to it eventually” type of list, growing more intimidating with each entry.

But eventually, for various reasons, I dove in. And yeah, if you haven’t already drawn the connection yourself, that headiness has often seemed aligned with how I’ve come to feel about Nolan’s works: Garland’s films are meticulously put together, and have very intriguing concepts to structure around, but are often not really “about” anything. They’re kind of more sinfully empty versus Nolan’s stuff because Garland’s scripts / direction imply a lot more depth through pacing and punctuated shots and sound design, but you’re ultimately left with some very simple thoughts about AI and what makes us human; really, the kind of conversations you’re having as a young adult, over coffee and cigarettes, thinking you’re on to something profound.

By the same token, the fact that Garland stops short of injecting any decisive “this is how you should feel” sections into his films allows for this kind of navel-gazing, and the precision of the presentation carries things even further. Still, I’d say this approach worked best when the questions were a bit quieter and more focused, which was true in Ex Machina. Less so in Annihilation, which essentially picks up Ex Machina’s thread of the divide between sentient human and non-sentient robot, and refigures the latter into a land of mutations behind “The Shimmer,” a no-signals-getting-in-or-out wasteland caused by a meteorite crash, and is now being studied in secret by the government.

We pick up with biologist Lena (Natalie Portman), muddling through the uncertainty of her husband (Oscar Isaac) having not returned from an Army mission for a year, with no information on his status, or what the mission was. A celebration of his sudden return is stymied: first by his utter lack of ability to explain where he was, second by his lack of emotion about that, and then third when he takes a sip of water and coughs up blood. A trip to the hospital is interrupted by black-clad official types; Lena wakes up in an observation facility on the outskirts of The Shimmer, run by a Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is putting together a team to explore that region, which, yes, is another edition of a similar mission on which Lena’s husband went. Lena joins.

The film plays out cutting between the “present,” where Lena debriefs hazmat suited folks on her time in The Shimmer, and flashbacks to her time therein.

Circling back around to my initial extended criticism, there are certain lines spoken, and the way some sequences are shot, which indicate that Annihilation is going to go down some predictable routes with its subject matter, and it’s hard to generate much enthusiasm for its content with that awareness – in the sense that it’s building to anything very impactful. This is different from the movie’s lack of “answers,” and again, is more about dressing up some pretty basic thought experiments. But that dressing is glorious, and there’s a tasteful balance of jump scares, effects work, body horror elements, and Garland’s leaving space for some character work, that makes the movie compelling regardless.

The prime choice in presentation is that we do not sink into outright surrealism, over-treatment of colors, or “drug trip” psychedelia, even somehow during a 2001-esque visual. Rather, Garland (and his DP, and production designers, and sound designers; all working in concert) settle on exacerbating a general “shimmer” of prismatic colors at the edges of things, but otherwise focusing on a sort of organic blend of both overgrowth and decay to the flora and fauna of The Shimmer. You’ll surely think of The Last of Us, or a dealer’s choice of “nature takes over” post-apocalyptic visuals, but the balance between going full grounded and impossibilities in Annihilation’s visuals is masterful, and entrancing; it is a unique take.

Casting is also great. I don’t think the characters are all that great – I take it as a sign that I sincerely couldn’t remember anyone’s name – but Garland landed on good archetypes for each lead, and the actors then ran with that to imbue those archetypes with a sense of background, and humanity.

Effects-wise, a modest budget is well-used, and like the balance of the setting, there’s an awareness of what we’re seeing as CG or touched by CG, while either being blended effectively with practical elements or made to look like them. I admittedly wanted things to feel a bit more tactile, but on the whole, there is an “off-ness” to the things that are… off, which works with everything else going on in The Shimmer.

While Ex Machina still remains (to me) the best version of Garland’s explorations of Being Human, Annihilation’s ante up in scope is very well managed. I don’t know that you’ll walk away from the movie with much to chew on, if that was the intent – and I feel like it must be, to an extent – but the control over what we see on screen, and the willingness to go weird with that, are blessed qualities.