4.5 stars out of 5
Last summer, my friend Julie recommended the Southern Reach trilogy of novels by Jeff VanderMeer. I put them on my Amazon shopping list but never got around to making the purchase. And the books slipped my mind until, well into watching this truly impressive film, I suddenly thought, “Hey, one of those novels was titled… Annihilation!” Yup, the very same. So I think I was destined to see this.
In fact, there was no way I wasn’t going to see Annihilation. I was a huge fan of star Natalie Portman, hero to Jewish boys everywhere, long before she guest-edited an issue of my magazine. (There was a moment during that process when it seemed she and I might meet, and who knows the alternate future those sliding doors could have provoked.) And director/screenwriter Alex Garland’s previous feature, Ex Machina, was one of my top-10 films of 2015.
Not that I knew what to expect, or was certain that I’d love it. The trailer was pretty confusing, and, just between you and me, I didn’t make it all the way through Portman as Jackie. But seeing that the great Oscar Isaac (who also starred in Sex Machina, whoops I spelled that wrong) was in this was a very good sign. Huh, who ever thunk that Queen Amidala and Poe Dameron would ever meet!
In Annihilation, they’re a married couple who met in the army; Portman is now a Johns Hopkins biology professor but Isaac is still in the service, MIA and presumed dead for a year. Then Isaac suddenly returns. He’s got PTSD out the ying-yang. Portman soon learns about the secret mission he’d been on: A weird “shimmer” has appeared around a wooded area, reminiscent of that red-curtain entrance to the Black Lodge that sometimes pops up in the outskirts of Twin Peaks. The shimmied region keeps getting bigger, and the government has been sending in teams to find out what the dilly-o is. But like a Roach Motel, they check in… but they don’t check out.
Portman, with her convenient science/military background, signs up for the next crew of guinea pigs to enter. And here’s where the movie proudly gives us a team of super-smart, kick-ass, action-hero women. They also include Tessa Thompson, so great in Creed, and my old fave Jennifer Jason Leigh, again displaying the toughness she employed in The Hateful Eight, but more serious here with The More Serious Five.
As the team goes deeper and deeper into the mystic, and things get weirder and weirder, I was reminded of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. But there’s an extra layer of nonstop, building tension here — woman against nature, woman against woman, woman against herself — and some truly terrifying, eyes-and-mouth-wide-open content. I won’t say more about the plot, in case you also didn’t read that trilogy, but suffice to say I was absolutely riveted all the way through. Annihilation is a real head trip, and one of the best sci-fi films I’ve ever seen.
Jack Silbert, curator