Annihilation, written and directed by Alex Garland, tells the story of biologist Lena, played by Natalie Portman, whose husband has been injured in a military operation charting a disaster zone called the Shimmer, which was created by a meteor. Lena, wanting to save her husband, embarks on another mission into the Shimmer with an all-female team of military personnel and scientists: psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), anthropologist Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), and physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson).
Annihilation has been receiving a lot of praise for its visionary story, but I did not see this as a triumph for sci-fi film. Typically, I will give a film the benefit of the doubt. I want to trust that its creators have a goal and a message that is worth my time. But for the first time ever, halfway through the film, I considered getting up and walking out of the theatre.
I despised this film. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t understand what Alex Garland was attempting to achieve. Film is different for everyone, especially this film. People pick up different themes and messages for what the film is about, which generates different responses. Many times, I’ve discussed films with my friends, and some would dislike it and others would love it, and we would ask ourselves, “Did we see the same movie?”
Some of the themes within Annihilation, as described in this RogerEbert.com article, are self-destruction, evolution, biology, co-dependence, duality, and corruption. But what should have been a badass story about five strong, female characters turned into an overly inflated, boring film.
My first issue was with its story structure. The film has three different timelines going on: the time before the women enter the Shimmer, Lena’s interview after she exits the Shimmer, and the time in the Shimmer. The audience is experiencing the story through flashback, which can be handled effectively in TV shows such as How to Get Away with Murder, but flashback is typically a big no-no in the film world. Flashback can be used to increase tension and include exposition that is otherwise unknown to the audience. However, I found the flashbacks became increasingly irritating as the film went on because it was giving the audience information we already knew from previous scenes and subtext. Not to mention they were almost always about Lena having sex, which implied to me that the only connection she had with her husband was a physical one.
At the beginning of the movie, we find out that Lena is the only one who has made it back alive from this expedition. We are given vague details about what happened to the others, which is fine because, for all we know, Lena could be lying. But there was an instance later on in the movie when Lena’s interviewer reveals important information about another character that should have been revealed through action and at a climatic moment in the film. As soon as I witnessed this scene, I rolled my eyes. I didn’t care about that other character anymore. On top of that, there were too many instances of characters telling the audience what was happening rather than showing it through action.
Another issue I found was that the rules of the world didn’t feel explored enough for me to have a concrete understanding of what was happening. I had to take everything at face value, which is a valid experience to have in uncharted territory, but if the film is unable to give you enough rules and boundaries to follow along with, then everything just seems arbitrary. You can say anything and I have to believe you, and that’s not engaging for an audience. There had also been previous teams who had gone into the Shimmer, and I thought the film should have tried harder to to create a dual storyline effect with Lena’s team and her husband’s team. This would have created suspense for the audience based on what was happening and what had happened before, as well as expanding the world of the Shimmer in a natural way.
I can’t speak to the book, which I would assume did a better job, but the characters in the film felt one-dimensional to me. These are amazing award-winning actresses and, when I watched the film, I felt sorry for them because of the bad script and shitty dialogue they had to work with. I applaud Gina Rodriguez for her acting, because Anya was the character who stood out to me the most. The reason the characters fell flat for me was because they did not undergo any change. Characters should have goals, overcome obstacles, and undergo change because of these obstacles so that, by the end of a story, we feel like this was an experience; a journey. Annihilation felt like the characters had decided to go on a walk and were meandering through the bush with no clear objective in mind.
I also felt cheated by Lena’s character because of her main goal. The reason she’s gone on this expedition is because she wanted to save her husband, which is fine, but this was compounded by the fact that she cheated on him and she felt guilty about it. However, it was unclear whether she cheated on him after he went missing in the Shimmer or before he left for the mission. It sounds like a good complication, but really, it reduces her character to a faithful wife estranged from her husband with no other aspirations. But women are more than their spouses and she’s a freaking biologist! I thought a large part of her motivation is because she’s never seen an environment like this, but no, that was completely underplayed. And the other female characters were given one unique “destructive” characteristic, didn’t undergo any change and, then died.
I had a lot of hope for this film because of Garland’s previous work in Ex Machina. But I was disappointed in his execution of a story that should have been spectacular. In current times, more female-driven films are being made, and I hope Annihilation doesn’t hold back other female sci-fi films from production. And maybe they should be written by women, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that this film was written by a man.
If you want to watch the film to support the actresses who gave it their best shot, I won’t stop you. But honestly, don’t waste your time.
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