Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Annihilation begins with a relatively easy-to-grasp mystery. Biologist and soldier Lena’s (Natalie Portman) husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) has been missing for a year, vanishing in an undisclosed military expedition. Then one night, Kane reappears. Apparently with no memory of where he has been, and only even barely aware of Lena at all, it’s not long before he starts coughing up blood. And it’s not long after that that the men in Hazmat suits carrying machine guns show up to whisk Lena and Kane away.
Here’s where things start to get juicy. Lena soon finds herself at a military/research base on the edge of something known as The Shimmer, a bizarre glowing field of possibly extraterrestrial origin that has been growing at a slow but exponential rate. No one who has ever gone into The Shimmer has ever returned, no one, that is, until Kane.
Determined to unlock the mystery of what happened to her husband, Lena volunteers for the next expedition in, joining scientists Cassie (Tuva Novotny) and Josie (Tessa Thompson), paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), and led by the mysterious psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh). But as they observe The Shimmer, the area seems to observe them right back, barraging the women with mutations both beautiful and hostile.
The further Lena wades into The Shimmer, the more she finds herself confronting not only the physical monsters seeking her destruction, but her own self-destructive tendencies and history, until at last she comes face to face with annihilation itself.
Inspired by the first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy, writer-director Alex Garland only loosely adapted the actual text in favor of reproducing the dream-like tone and feel of the novel. The potent mixture of horror and psychological/philosophical probing apparently terrified studio heads, who promptly sold the film’s international rights to Netflix and dumped Annihilation into US theaters with only minor fanfare.
Despite this middling release (and box office) genre fans and film lovers rapidly kindled to Annihilation. Between its instantly iconic monsters, its packed ensemble, and mind-bending visuals, Annihilation gave filmgoers much to chew on. In the days and weeks after its release, Annihilation inspired tremendous writings on everything from its craft, to its sound, to themes of depression and self-destruction.
As we say goodbye to Women in Horror Month, we thought it only fitting to tip our hat to a new, female-driven entry that seems sure to divide and mesmerize for as long as we watch and obsess over films.
Next week’s pick:
It’s almost spring, a time for rebirth and renewals. A time when we shed the miseries and hurts of winter and look forward to the shining, better days that lie ahead. In this spirit, we are undertaking a new series: Two Cents Second Chance Theater.
That’s right. For the next few weeks, we will be choosing films that our editors and contributors don’t like, and watching them again to see if maybe this time we’ll see what everyone else enjoyed. Starting us out strong right out of the gate, Austin is a fan of Weird Al Yankovic but found UHF annoying and exhausting.
Do you want to show him the error of his ways? Or perhaps you also disdain this goofy wonder and you’d like to tell us why? UHF is available streaming on Amazon Prime.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Also, if you have a movie that you disliked but want to give a second shot, let us know and we might feature it as one of our upcoming picks!
The Team
If you checked out our team’s Best of 2018, you may already know that Annihilation was my top film of 2018. Truth be told, the competition wasn’t even close.
Alex Garland has quickly become a force to be reckoned with directorally. Despite having only two features under his belt, he has shown an amazing propensity towards crafting horror/sci-fi genre mashups that look amazing visually, tell powerful stories, and provide scares that shake the viewer to the core. After an incredible debut with 2014’s Ex Machina, he chose to adapt Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation — an exquisitely bizarre and complex entry into the world of weird fiction.
While the film and book diverge greatly, the core ideas from VanderMeer’s novel were built out into a world like no other. In this world, everything is mutated and deformed, yet incredibly beautiful in its unnatural state. The film (and book) are intentionally very empowering of women, with nearly all of the players being smart, strong women. What these women experience can only be described as horrifying, captivating, and brutal.
This movie uniquely blends B-movie science fiction, hard science, body horror, and big budget action thrills. I stand by it as 2018’s best and couldn’t think of a better exclamation point for the closing of February’s Women in Horror Month celebrations. (@thepaintedman)
It’s beyond refreshing to see a sci-fi film with a woman-centric story (even if Garland adjusts the heroine’s quest from the scientific focus of the novel to the “maybe she can save her husband’s life” path of the movie). Portman’s Lena prefers to keep mum while others talk, not offering much information about herself. Anya, however, is vocal and brash, unafraid to speak her mind. Rodriguez and Thompson, with her understated performance, are impressive in Annihilation.
Garland’s visual effects team has created a breathtaking wonder in this mysterious world. The women encounter horrific hybrids of flora and fauna. Distortion and dissonance are visual themes, whether the image of a couple’s clasping hands is refracted by a water glass, an ill Kane is viewed through a hard plastic curtain, or visions are reflected through windows.
Annihilation moves with a startling quiet — indeed, it seems a tad slow at the start — which makes the quality of the audio production stand out. The scoring by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury (who teamed together on Ex Machina as well) sounds like something from a José González album, until the mind-bending conclusion.
Read Elizabeth’s full review HERE. (elizabeth stoddard)
I think by this point, I just have to tell Alex Garland, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
And I mean that sincerely.There’s nothing I can point to that’s especially ‘wrong’ with Annihilation, or Ex Machina, or Dredd. They are smart, adult sci-fi with exemplary casts, beautifully realized worlds, and tremendously accomplished visual/audio components. And yet all three films (Garland isn’t the credited director of Dredd, but it’s widely accepted as being ‘his’ movie) leave me more or less totally cold. I admire them, I find certain individual scenes and images entrancing, but at the end of the day his movies never touch or enthrall me the way they do others. And that really bums me out, honestly. I’ve read numerous thinkpieces and articles about Annihilation, and I wish the film spoke to me the way it does to others. I wish it inspired the introspection and self-reckoning it has in a number of my friends and colleagues, that I responded to it on a richer level beyond “pretty colors, scary bear”.
I think part of the disconnect for me is that each of Garland’s films presents an inhuman intelligence that is truly ‘inhuman’ in a way we don’t often get from science fiction. His robots are not just people with super-abilities punching through cement beams, and his aliens are not just dudes with forehead bumps or bitey assholes with tentacles. Garland instead grapples with what a truly ALIEN presence might look/feel like, and effect such an encounter might inspire. That cold, reserved quality to his films, then, is not a bug but a feature.
Anyway, I’m not the biggest fan of Annihilation, but I’m glad it exists. I’m glad it’s inspired so much discussion and dissection, and I imagine that one day it will be an entrenched and oft-examined classic of both horror and science fiction, with no one ever remembering the consternation it caused at first blush.(@theTrueBrendanF)
These “man on a mission” movies tend to be just that, but it’s really interesting to see the dynamics of this all-lady crew and how they deal with their situation and each new challenge or hazard as women of both military and science — especially when they’re in disagreement.
Director Alex Garland has been on an incredible trajectory as perhaps the most exciting new science fiction filmmaker, first as a writer (whose credits include one of my absolute favorites, Sunshine) and more recently as director.
I’m kind of a Chernobyl nut, and while Annihilation is not connected to that incident, there’s a lot of that abandoned, surreal aesthetic in the design, a vision of destroyed beauty that’s a big part of its appeal. Full of intrigue, scares, amazing imagery and an enigmatic ending, this is a film that demands to be watched and rewatched. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick: