Thoughts on Annihilation?

Submitted by kczbrekker t3_122tfhe in movies

Watched Annihilation for the first time today and I have to say I really quite enjoyed it. The cinematography is great but what fascinated me was the concept. I think the main theme of the movie is self destruction.

The beginning of the movie the main character Lena talks about cancer cell. The psychiatrist talks about the way human beings and everything we know tends to be self destructive. I think the way Lena destroys the mutated or shimmer duplicate and thus destroys the whole mutation is that idea. Also the way a character accepts the physical mutation they get and just turned into the plant thing. The male lead also kills himself after getting mutated.

And my take about the ending is, it doesn't really matter if it was the real Lena. Because the duplicate husband and the supposed real Lena both are mutanted. The shimmer was changed by the human and the human was changed by the shimmer. Can it refer to the opposite of self destruction? That we should try to accept things?

Another thing that sets this movie apart from other alien movies alongside with the wonderful depiction of alien/unknown/mutated nature is that they didn't want anything. They didn't want to destroy earth or kill the humans. They were just lives getting born and spread that were unknown by the humans. It was just so beautiful.

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Stovenryall t1_jdrri1i wrote

Yea I read the book first. The movie was really great

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schlitzntl t1_jdrs1kb wrote

If you want to half hear someone rant about quick takes, but also cover Annihilation pretty well.

https://youtu.be/URo66iLNEZw

Also, has one of my favorite edits - when the enter the shimmer it jump cuts way to far ahead to them getting up from their camp site. It’s such a jarring cut I was almost mad until the main character was also like, “does anyone remember how we got here” was cool how they used the cut to create the same unease that the characters felt.

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Houli_B_Back t1_jdru3d6 wrote

Really great.

It’s hard to do New Weird and ambiguous well, without coming off as purposefully obscure for the sake of obscure.

But I never got that feeling watching it.

I also like the fact they totally lifted a horror set piece from a Gene Wolfe book. Lol.

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PrincessMonopoke t1_jdrvc4p wrote

Scary bear 😱

That was worth it alone, but everything else was pretty great, too. Did a great job showing how beautiful, horrifying, and/or intriguing the unknown can be (in this case, mostly horrifying). Made me want to read the books if I ever get around to catching up on my reading list... ... ... lol

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henryhollaway t1_jdryy3v wrote

Top notch lovecraftian sci-fi horror, I don’t understand how some people don’t like the ending because it is thematically perfect

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thalguy t1_jds01lz wrote

I really enjoyed it. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it was original and I liked the performances.

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WendysChiliAndPepsi t1_jds25od wrote

Replying to tantrum007 (#2,374,443)

I think the expectation of what the movie is trying to be is what people are rating it on. I feel like by the end the movie wasn’t as interesting as it’s concept/premise was attempting to be. The ending was trying to be ambiguous and open ended but based on what happens in the movie I don’t think there’s much interpretation.

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centuryblessings t1_jds77o5 wrote

It was beautiful visually. There are some scenes in that movie that still haunt me, in a good way. Though tbh the relationship issues that set up the film were kind of dull. But overall I enjoyed it.

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Mindless_Bad_1591 t1_jds9ltd wrote

I thought it was good but sorta fell off towards the end. I watched it like 2-3 years ago so I don't recall what was weird towards the end. Also the bear scene was fucking terrific.

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Love-That-Danhausen t1_jdsdbuh wrote

Replying to Agerak (#2,375,794)

King used to be known for setting an amazing story for 95% of it and having the ending fall apart. I don’t think that’s quite fair but some of his work does have weaker endings that maybe stop them at good stories rather than great/masterpieces.

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reddit_beer_map t1_jdsflxs wrote

it's a great movie and a great book, even though they are totally different.

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Hier00 t1_jdskhg6 wrote

I thought it was terrible. Great concept, awful execution. The bear and the cave scene at the end were really good, of course, but everything else fails movie-making 101. Weak characters, weak script, even the acting could have been better. Overall not a good sci-fi movie.

This, however, is my view. If you really enjoyed it, as many have, don’t let this change. It just means you and I were looking for different things.

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iDuddits_ t1_jdst87n wrote

Replying to tantrum007 (#2,374,443)

yeah, it was hyped a bit too much for me and I didn't like any of the characters from what I remember?
Still give it like a six just based on comparisons to contemporary movies haha.

I absolutely loved Men though.. so what do I know.

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Cowtippa1 t1_jdt1hfc wrote

I think it's hot, boring garbage and I hate it. Literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

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T_J_E7 t1_jdt90es wrote

Replying to reddit_beer_map (#2,380,707)

We are on the same page. I really enjoyed Borne and haven't finished Dead Astronauts. It's on my short list because I got so far that I need to know the ending. Haven't gotten to it for like a year though.

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CapMarkoRamius t1_jdtdtbx wrote

To me, it has the same vibe as Ad Astra. Everyone took a near-OD dose of Ambien before the film starts and they keep at that emotional level for the entire film.

The effects and scenery in both? Outstanding. The acting? Like the mirror opposite of a nervous high school play.

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Arfguy t1_jdtebbj wrote

When my friend told me that Annihilation was about cancer, a lot of it made sense.

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CoconutDust t1_jdth7cc wrote

Replying to schlitzntl (#2,374,242)

Yeah that one was one of the best parts, fullblown confusion almost immediately despite all confidence going in.

Strange that you were almost mad though, it was obviously part of the reality and the distortion. Though now that I think of it, nothing else in the movie has amnesia ellipsis…why didn’t that same phenomenon ever happen again?

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CoconutDust t1_jdthn4u wrote

Replying to CapMarkoRamius (#2,381,631)

Ad Astra was unsalvageable pretentious garbage, almost everything was wrong on every level. Even the name is pretentious bullshit. I liked James Grey before seeing Ad Astra, too.

Annihilation is a fail on many levels, but at least as some respectable failures and attempts and some creepy moments and thematic stuff that hold together.

I mean Ad Astra has people driving 1960's lunar rovers for no reason, why is Donald Sutherland (I love the guy) even there, why is Ruth Negga even there, why is the pirate lunar rover chase even there, now we're surfing on a nuke wave with a piece of metal surfboard like it's the end of commonly-cited worst Bond movie ever Die Another Day. Terrible stuff. And it's made all the more terrible by the fact that "Heart of Darkness...in Space" could have been good.

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CoconutDust t1_jdthynl wrote

Replying to Arfguy (#2,381,706)

If someone says a thing is "about" something, that is meaningless nonsense except for people who think art is reducible to a 3 word cryptographic secret message.

Saying it's "about" "cancer" is like saying Terminator is about exterminator companies. Biological malignance doesn't mean it's a secret essay about cancer, otherwise The Blob and John Carpenter's The Thing and etc etc are all "about" "cancer" which is obviously false and a silly immature thoughtless way of looking at art.

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smalltalkbigwalk t1_jdti839 wrote

Replying to Arfguy (#2,381,706)

The couple at the end are the cancerous replicas of the original "cells". I kind of figured this out during the video recording reveal in the 3rd act, and this was while I was on shrooms. Oh no everyone at the end of the movie has space cancer now aaah.

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CoconutDust t1_jdtj5ms wrote

Annihilation wasn't as bad as Ad Astra (no connection, just another weird failed sci-fi movie from around the same time, which somebody happened to mention in these comments) but was a fail on many levels.

People talked about the amnesia cut when they first go in and their rations are gone, yeah I liked that moment except then I don't believe anything else in the movie ever re-used the same phenomenon of missing elapsed time. Because the movie is a jumbled mish-mash of inconsistent nonsense.

Everybody is talking about the bear, which indeed was scary, but seems like a writer coming up with a scary thing but now being able to connect it to anything in a relevant way. It's also an excuse for the (OF COURSE) gung ho firing of machine guns. Of course a movie superficially about some scientists going in to succeed where the pure military guys failed shows the characters all with M16's or whatever: American gun fetish. Gotta have guns. The only good angle with the gun stuff was that the science team got further than the soldier team. I actually like good soldier story stuff, and this is quite an affecting example where a team prepared in the exact wrong ways both physically and mentally for a mission are doomed...and not through a fault of their own necessarily, which makes it all the more tragic and disturbing.

Anyway the biggest fail of the movie was the shallow use of natural environments: the woods, the water, vegetation all around, and with the conceit of mutations and biological alterations (etc etc) yet no weird lifeforms were ever observed at all except for a couple cases of needing to shoot machine guns again (the bear, the crocodile). Any idiot who has ever been in the woods knows that you are SURROUNDED on all sides by bugs, mosquitos, birds, salamanders, small mammals, dragonflies, blackflies, moths, fish, moss, fungi, algae, and yet this movie ignorantly has no awareness of any of this except for a couple Capital S Scenes for guns (shooting a scary bear monster, shooting a crocodile). Now I know that may seem like a thin criticism, but keep in mind all the biological pretense of this movie (like a character suddenly becoming a plant, and everything else) and the fact that it takes place in a lush natural wild environment, and yet...almost zero critters.

The ending was also pretentious crap with the silly metallic dance-like alien doppelganger thing. The core idea here is good and scary, especially with how a neutral innocent movement inadvertently causes the opposite movement which then causes protagonist to get temporarily crushed (that's great writing for a psychological/biological/sci-fi/confusion scenario), but the way it was done visually and direction-wise was crap.

I do want to say that apart from the amnesia ellipsis (which I liked, when it happened), the giant worm portal thing in Oscar Isaac's abdomen was also another well-done disturbing sci-fi/psychological/body horror/anomaly moment.

As a point of contrast, when someone like Tarkovsky makes a movie like Solaris, I think he actually thinks more about his ideas and commits more, whereas Annihilation is an inconsistent mish-mash and compormised.

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green_meklar t1_jdtkiiy wrote

Good movie, but I read the book before watching the movie and the movie was not anything like a faithful adaptation of the book. And unlike some adaptations which change things for good reasons (e.g. Lord of the Rings), I felt like in this case they could have done a better job of just doing what the book did, which was already largely good enough to be filmable.

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b_dills t1_jdu3nep wrote

Went to see it while going through a divorce. Do not recommend lol.

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CaptainBoobyKisser t1_jdunmof wrote

Replying to schlitzntl (#2,374,242)

I just watched that video. Never heard of that guy before. He is way smarter than I am. I did not enjoy his thoughts. Even if he is completely correct, his point of view was like medicine or vitamins. Good stuff, but not fun. I just want to enjoy a good movie, man.

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NKevros t1_jduv2pf wrote

It was fine but when you compare it to Garland's previous movie (Ex Machina) it isn't nearly as well executed. Annihilation had some cool ideas and great visuals, but it just felt weak in general. I think part of my hold up was the lack of believability in Natalie Portman's character and her acting, but they seemed to introduce a lot of questions about how the thing "worked" without actually answering them.

(Tessa Thomson is a plant now I guess. Did you need to physically touch the "center" of the shimmer to get a copy? If so does that mean that the twinned deer worked themselves into that cavern too (through closed doors)? Here are just some human bones hanging out on the beach. Why did Kane's grenade just kill him, but Lena's burn down /EVERYTHING/).

Ultimately, it's hard to introduce a new idea, and the prismatic alteration of DNA is a neat one, but it is also kind of a handwaving crutch for some of the fates of both people and animals just to have cool visuals.

Judging by the downvotes anyone speaking negatively about the movie is getting, I expect the same.

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DaddyMcTasty t1_jdw0clh wrote

Replying to tantrum007 (#2,374,443)

I felt like I kept waiting for something to happen, and then it was over. The visuals looked cool but it just didn't do it for me. When an article came out about how the bear was one of the scariest things in movies for a while I laughed

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RoRo25 t1_jdwsanl wrote

Loved the movie. I was surprised that there was no mention of H. P. Lovecraft in the credits.

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PinkNeonBowser t1_je2s1y1 wrote

This is one of those movies that had me thinking about it long after it ended. The visitor and what it wanted, the themes of self-destruction and change. It's one of my favorite movies

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