Is 'Annihilation' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Say
2014's "Annihilation," the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, is an unsettling sci-fi tale about an eerie unravelling of nature. It's a classically "unfilmable" novel, but Alex Garland (scribe of "28 Days Later" and writer/director of "Ex Machina") is giving it his spin on February 23rd. Paramount got cold feet about the film — it'll get a theatrical release in the US, but its straight to Netflix elsewhere. Is this another "Cloverfield Paradox" situation or is Paramount afraid a mass audience will bounce off a smart film? Here's what the reviews say:
The Film Follows A Group Of Five Women Into A Mysterious, Hostile Wilderness Zone
Based on the first book of author Jeff VanderMeer's so-called Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation stars Portman as Lena, a biologist whose soldier husband Kane (Isaac) has been missing in action for a year. When he returns home, though, he can't explain where he has been, what his mission was and why he is violently ill. As Kane clings to life in a military hospital, Lena volunteers to accompany a group of soldiers who are venturing into Area X, a quarantined section of American coastline where, she learns, Kane and his team went to investigate [spoiler].
Compared to their single-minded commanding officer, Dr. Ventress (a no-nonsense Jennifer Jason Leigh), and the three thick-skinned, hyper-intelligent military women along for the trip (Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson), Portman's Lena at first looks like she might be the weak link, only to find that she's a resilient soldier-scientist in her own right, having previously served seven years in the Army — and no slouch with a rapid-fire cannon.
[Variety]
As [Lena] wanders a jungle overtaken by invisible processes that have led to unnatural plant life and at least one terrifying mutated bear, the body count rises and the mysterious threat builds.
It Has Stylistic Roots In The Work Of Kubrick, Carpenter And Tarkovsky
To call "Annihilation" an "adaptation" doesn't really do either the book or the film justice. Written before the sequels even existed, Garland's script seizes on key ideas from VanderMeer's novel, but spins them in entirely new directions, using the source as a kind of leaping-off point[…]
[Variety]
Where the novel's blend of economical storytelling and survivalist thrills was a Kafkaesque variation on "Lost," Garland's cinematic interpretation plays more like "Alien" by way of Darren Aronofsky's "mother!" — it's a horror show in which the survivors' prospects are dim, but they're consumed by an environment of ethereal beauty, and Garland makes it clear that those two variables can coexist.
A journey into an alien heart of darkness, Annihilation feels like it's been fashioned from gene-splicing Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now with John Carpenter's The Thing (especially in a pool-set scene of blooming monstrousness) and, also, Stanley Kubrick's 2001, the latter's spiritual influence coming to the fore during a finale of such prolonged, mesmerizing surrealism that it made my eyes burn—mainly because I didn't want to blink, lest I miss a moment of its insanity.
To reveal Area X's surprises would spoil the fun, but suffice to say that Annihilation has some overlap with Solaris and Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky's ruminative and mind-bending portraits of surreal other worlds.
Natalie Portman's Lena Anchors The Emotional And Analytical Sides Of The Film
Portman's mix of vulnerability and flintiness, stretched across a narrative that includes flashbacks to her marriage and flash-forwards to a post-mission interrogation, is thoroughly engrossing, as are the top notes of resolve, fear and deterioration individually rendered by her co-stars.
[TheWrap]
Portman remains the chief among relative equals, both because she's the star and because her character has the connection to the only known survivor of [Area X] to date. The actress may not be the physical equal of some of the others, but she compellingly conveys Lena's fierce determination to both figure out what happened to her husband and solve the mystery of this colorful but terrifying unknown force of nature.
The Rest Of The All-Women Ensemble Get Their Opportunities To Impress, Especially Rodriguez
All the characters get a chance to make a strong impression. Leigh, last prominently seen on the big screen spewing obscenities and blood in The Hateful Eight, could scarcely be more different here as the tough, watchful, oddly edgy group commander, while Thompson gets a few good verbal licks in.
There's also great work from their other crew members played by Gina Rodriguez, so charming in Jane the Virgin and so striking here, Tessa Thompson, quietly affecting and deserving of her Bafta-nominated rising star status and Swedish actor Tuva Nuvotny who makes a piercing impression in a small role.
Rodriguez in particular is a revelation, readily dispatching her sparkly-sweet "Jane the Virgin" persona to commandingly convey a hard-ass who cracks spectacularly in one terrifying scene.
[TheWrap]
Yes, The Leads Are Whitewashed Relative To VanderMeer's Later Southern Reach Novels
Whether firing a machine gun or calmly studying Area X's latest curiosity, Portman is commanding as a scientist whose background as a soldier will serve her well. As for Leigh, she brings an eerie reserve to Ventress, rendering the character a fascinating enigma. In VanderMeer's later novels, these two characters are revealed to be, respectively, Asian and half-Native American/half-Caucasian, which has provoked advocacy groups to blast the film's casting choices. It's a disappointing slipup in a film that is otherwise quite thoughtful.
"Annihilation" is quietly progressive on several levels, as both a female-centric blockbuster and a smarter alternative to big budget spectacle, which makes the charges of whitewashing it has faced especially ironic. While it's true that Lena's character was revealed as an Asian American in VanderMeer's second novel, in the first, she's a blank slate — and that extends to the movie's thematic concerns. Its ill-fated characters wander a world overtaken by natural processes, rendering identity of any type — white, black, flower, gator — into a distracting construct. Nobody's safe. The monsters come for all of us.
It Demands To Be Seen And Heard In A Theater (Sorry, Folks Outside The US)
For a movie that depends mightily on the subtle transformation of natural beauty into an atmosphere of picturesque dread (before going full-on hallucinogenic), kudos go to the interplay of the behind-the-scenes team: cinematographer Rob Hardy's textured visuals, Mark Digby's freaky-flora production design, Glenn Fremantle's soundscape, and Andrew Whitehurst's visual effects, which run the gamut from the chillingly hyperreal to the magnetically kaleidoscopic. Bringing it all together is Garland's harmonious blending of the clinical and the otherworldly, without ever sacrificing the emotional life of his characters.
[TheWrap]
The rumbling, churning electronic score by Ben Salisbury and Portishead's Geoff Barrow, who previously collaborated on the score to Ex Machina, finds a path directly to the viewer's anxiety button and presses it incessantly.
At The Very Least, Sci-Fi Scholars Will Find Lots To Enjoy
It's hugely refreshing, and remarkably uncommon, to watch a genre film that revolves around intelligent characters reacting intelligently to fantastical events. The team is made up of briskly efficient problem-solvers who remain practical and focused while dealing with otherworldly mayhem.
"Annihilation" exists outside the realm of previous human experience, allowing Garland to toy with still other (im)possibilities — including the atavistic fear of how our bodies work on a microscopic level — by turning the characters' very DNA against them, while doing even stranger things to their minds.
[Variety]
Alex Garland's film begins conventionally before spiraling into ever-more-hallucinatory realms, its every element in perfect harmony with its larger themes—all of which resound not as definitive statements but as haunting questions that linger long after the credits have rolled. In just about every respect, it's the finest cinematic sci-fi in years—or, at least, since Garland's prior Ex Machina.
TL;DR
Like all things this cosmic, it will certainly be snickered about as "trippy shit." But I suspect a sizable portion of the audience will see themselves there.
[Vulture]
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