Now Watching: Annihilation

I thought Ex Machina was great, so I was eager to see Annihilation by the same writer/directer, Alex Garland. Unfortunately, it’s a film I came away liking the concept of, rather than the execution. It’s a film with some very good individual scenes – but not a very good overall structure. Be warned: there will be a few spoilers in this review.

The plot is this: an object/meteor or whatever crashes into a lighthouse on the coast. It forms a bubble – called the ‘shimmer’ – around the lighthouse which slowly begins to expand, consuming the surrounding area and transforming it – and any life within it – in strange and incredible ways.

Lena (Natalie Portman) is a former soldier and biologist who volunteers to join an expedition into the shimmer. The problem is, the film is essentially a flashback being told by Lena after she’s escaped. We know at the very beginning who lives, who dies and who gets out. And these scenes of Lena being debriefed – and also flashbacks to her life before entering the shimmer – seem entirely unnecessary.

We also don’t really know jack about the other scientists accompanying Lena. We’re told a few things about each character in a single scene and . . . that’s it. That’s all we get. As a result, I can’t say I really cared too much about what was happening to them.

This is also a film that raises a lot of distracting questions when watching. We’re told they’ve been investigating the shimmer for three years. They’ve sent in other teams – mostly military – by land and sea, but none have returned. So their new plan is . . . to send in another team? But why do they believe it will work this time, when all other expeditions have failed?

And why are they only sending a team of scientists into potentially hostile terrain? Why not send a military escort? In fact, why wasn’t their first expedition composed of both science and military personnel? Maybe it was, but the film completely glosses over these important questions.

They say drones were sent in, but what about helicopters? Can’t you fly in? Can’t we send a helicopter to park above the shimmer and drop a team down on ropes straight to the lighthouse? They say they’ve tried going in by sea – which makes sense, considering it’s the most direct and easiest route to the lighthouse – but this time they’re sending in their team on foot. Why? Why not just use a boat launched from a ship at the edge of the shimmer?

And if you want to go by land, why not send them with some transportation? Do the engines not work? All their cameras seem to work, so why wouldn’t an engine? They say nothing entering the shimmer has returned, but they seem pretty sure the air isn’t toxic because they enter it without any gas masks or hazardous protection. And why, if they know so little about the shimmer, do they need to go all the way to the lighthouse? Can’t they just go in several metres attached to a rope, take a few samples and return?

You could say these are pointless nitpicks because the film is really about what happens when they’re inside the shimmer, but I don’t think it can just gloss over all this stuff as irrelevant. It’s not to me, because I spent the entire film distracted by these questions. And even once they’re inside, things don’t quite add up, either.

Early in the film the characters ‘forget’ their first 3-4 days inside the shimmer, but why don’t they have video/written logs they can review? Isn’t this a scientific expedition? Wouldn’t they be documenting everything? It might make sense if we saw evidence of time becoming distorted the closer they moved to the lighthouse, but the lost time element is entirely forgotten beyond this opening scene.

The actual concept of what the shimmer is and what it’s doing is pretty neat and, as I said, it leads to some really good individual scenes. But the overall plot and the way it’s structured – the flashbacks/flash forwards – are rather weak, as are the characters, none of whom are given any time to shine.

Annihilation was frustrating to watch, because there’s some really cool stuff in here, both conceptually and visually. But everything surrounding that concept just fell a little flat for me. I’d still say it’s worth checking out, but don’t expect too much.

6/10