Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation has a lot in common with its directors previous film Ex Machina, even though it is based on a pre existing novel and not an original composition like the earlier work. Both movies are science fiction films that aim to play with their viewers minds and feature actor Oscar Isaacs. Both films focus on issues of identity, something which director/writer Alex Garland has been interested in at least since his screenplay adaption of the novel Never Let Me Go in 2010, a story that is pretty literally about the search for ones identity. This all makes for an appropriate and satisfying theme for the work of a science fiction director.

Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as Lena, a former solder in the U.S. army turned Johns Hopkins cellular biology professor (there can't be many of those), whose special forces husband (Issacs) returns home after having been missing for around a year, lost on a secret mission. Shortly after his return Issacs gets really sick and the couple are relocated to a military facility in costal Alabama and Lena is brought up to speed on what her husband was doing. Around three years previous something fell on the cost from outer space and has subsequently grown into a large semi-translucent bubble that is gobbling up increasing amounts of land and sea. The government has succeeded in evacuating the area under ruse of a chemical spill, but with the rate the bubble keeps growing that is not a cover story they will be able to keep going much longer. Issacs had been lost as part of a group exploring the bubble, and the government is not sure how he got home. As the bubble has altering effects on biological life within its radius, Lena is a natural pick to join another, this time all female (refreshing) scouting party, as its makes its way inside to search for the objects impact sight.

The bulk of the films is Lena's group sojourn inside this bubble, which the army has taken to calling "the shimmer". There are some interesting visuals and scares along their journey, but in basic form the movie is a conventional special mission story, that is until towards the very end, when it becomes a kind of mix of LSD trip and David Lynch's odder work. This is a satisfying movie and smarter then average for a big tent science fiction adventure. Recommended for those who like that sort of thing. ***