Annihilation (2018) -- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, dir. Alex Garland, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book

I was in awe that the Southern Reach facility looked exactly the same from the outside as what I'd imagined when reading the book

― mh, Monday, February 26, 2018

same!

x-post no but the colorful things that were growing all over the walls at the main station place they camped out at were pretty obviously lichens, right?

everything was a blend of organisms, really

Right that was the whole point but there were a bunch of things that looked particularly like lichens but just really colorful.

otm

Massive fan of the books so very stoked to catch this without seeing or reading anything about it other than Garland's struggle with the studio. Wanted to support this financially ('smart' SF i'm always in the theaters for, even though I hate theaters now; 45 minutes of trailers? fuck). Given that it had to be wrapped up in one film, it's not bad. Surprised by how much SFX they threw at this, I thought it looked fantastic. The ending sequence is a bit lame but really any conclusion Garland tried to bolt on there, considering the story trucks on for two more novels, was going to feel bolted on

A lot of the flaws are right there in the material as mentioned upthread (undeveloped Portman and Issac characters), so i forgive that, along with the Stalker comparisons. (When I was reading the books I never thought of Tarkovsky at all. Thematically though it has much more in common with Solaris rather than Stalker ...)

Non-book-readers' reactions to this are interesting – I heard a bunch of women from audience afterwards expressing disappointment that the film was unoriginal and not compelling but dressed up with a PC team to distract from that. Which brings me to something the movie had to ditch because of time: the unreal creepiness not of Area X but the Southern Reach organization. The only reason the team's female at all is because a few years in to sending people in there, the Reach is grasping at straws and trying to figure out what factor leads to everyone being killed, leading to weirdness like team members not being allowed to learn or use each other's names as well as random team composition. I think this is going to be one of those films that gets sought out on video, because it sits uncomfortably between a lot of genres and doesn't satisfy their individual dramatic demands

I think the lingering question -- is this extraterrestrial? what is it? -- is wisely sidelined by the discussion about motive. If this is something alien, why do we assume it wants something or even thinks in human terms of motive. What was the line from Radek, Tessa Thompson's character, about the motivations of the expedition? I remember she said Lena was looking to fight it, but I can't remember the exact phrasing when she referred to her own motivation or Ventress's

I think I need a second viewing

That's the scene that stuck in my mind too because I couldn't remember her phrasing

In the movie she said that the psychiatrist wanted to confront it and and Lena wanted to fight it but she didn’t think she wanted to do either of those things and then walked off and started sprouting flowers on her arms before disappearing. I think.

the image that stuck with me, other than the flowers, mosses, and lichens seeming so beautiful, is the part of the video they find where Isaac's character is doing ad hoc exploratory surgery and he turns to look at the camera

I have no idea what the direction he was given was, but the near-manic wild-eyed look he gave was almost scarier than any actual gore

xp that sounds about right. thanks, E!

I get seriously freaked by 'found footage' in horror films (probably starting with Prince of Darkness' last scene) so yeah was loving the shit out of the two videos that are in the movie. In the books there's a bit more done with that idea, I won't spoil it here, but it's extremely satisfying

I have no idea what the direction he was given was, but the near-manic wild-eyed look he gave was almost scarier than any actual gore

― mh, Monday, 26 February 2018 22:20 (yesterday) Permalink

OTM it felt like a glimpse of an even freakier, more fucked up story.

The last video with him commuting suicide by grenade was also very haunting

someone more informed than me should start a "future of film financing/distribution" etc. thread with regard to blockbusters, prestige, niche/art films in the current climate. maybe there already is one?

Oscar Isaac shooting some of these scenes across the lot from the Star Wars flick during the same week is some mind-bending shit. Kudos to him for acting in completely different contexts

that first video clip with the serpent-like intestine thing actually rivals most movies pitched as horror imo

I went to the bathroom and came back at the very end of that scene :(.

oof yeah i had to look away during that. totally agree about Isaac's insane manic wild-eyed look into the camera, by far the scariest thing in the movie

Portman has a weird vestigial remnant of her Jackie O drawl in this. Isaacs also weirdly goes Sgt Candy on the accent for five minutes, then never again.

Isaac has no SW vestiges which is wild considering he shot some scenes when bouncing between that movie and this one across the lot

unfortunately otm re: jackie drawl

I saw it last night and enjoyed it a lot. It helped that it's been a while since I read the books, which I loved; I was able to roll with the changes to the story and appreciate how much of VanderMeer's ideas, mood, and imagery made it onto the screen. I'm going to have to take another look at Stalker and Solaris but the Tarkovsky comparisons are apt. Some of the visuals in the beach scenes reminded me of Ballard. There's the gruesome sequence mentioned upthread but otherwise not much horror; I wonder if it got its R rating more because of the not-sexy sex scenes. It's easy to understand why the studio decided this would die at the box office: it's slow, somber, cosmic, and not at all child-friendly.

you kidding me? there's that video scene, the actual corpse/lichen/moss thing in the pool, the giant bear-thing that attacks, a lady with her throat ripped out, and a suicide by phosphorus grenade

no particular thing on its own might merit an R rating on violence, but there's a fair bit of random gore in there

yeah my friend who I saw it with had to look away multiple times, she was freaked by the bear thing

for an SF film, it's definitely scary, but I thought the total horror quotient was low compared to many R-rated horror movies ... I guess my tolerance is fairly high, but there's a lot of recent horror that's too much for me, and this isn't like that

I think the scary parts of Annihilation are especially powerful because the movie isn't just a succession of shrieking musical cues, pop-up scares, and gore effects; its quiet mood of disorientation and dread makes the horrific moments more effective when they occur

brief profile of Vandermeer and his thoughts on the film here:
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2018/02/22/jeff-vandermeer-goes-hollywood-well-not-really-annihilation/364406002/

aw man i love "local author" pieces...

I’m hoping some people from my synagogue will want to come along and see it (the film) with me,” Ann said. “He (Jeff) would rather be watching things with a cat in his lap and you can’t bring your cat to the movie theater with you.”

is he on ILX?

More here about the books here: where lies the strangling fruit...Area X - The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

asked my friend if he wanted to go see this tonight and he was like “u mean the ferngully meets prometheus movie?”

But so did he want to go

no ;_;

pod interview w/ Garland here

https://www.tiff.net/the-review/tiff-long-take-ep-54-alex-garland-on-annihilation-adaptation-and-the-future/

I went to see this with a group of friends and no one was super into it, but the ones who had read the books just hated it. I was entertained enough because I didn't really expect it to be as surreal and ambiguous as the book, but everything after they went into the zone was pretty heavy-handed and the deus ex machina ending was lame (I chuckled when the psychologist said the name of the movie and started spitting fire). Also we were making LFO synth noises for the rest of the night.

I did like how quiet it was for the most part! Like literally the silence between lines.

I think Arrival is a better sci-fi adaptation tbh, I felt a lot more invested in that (and appreciated the story-to-film changes more).

i didn't love this either. it got better once she got to the lighthouse, especially bc that stuff reminded me of (the much better) "under the skin." the first 3/4 of the movie was pretty boilerplate and a little dull, despite all the scares. but my bigger problem was there were too many unanswered questions that the director didn't seem interested in pretending to have answers for. i often love movies that i don't feel like i completely understand, but this just seemed to have a bunch of mysterious shit that didn't really connect to anything in any meaningful way, and the main character's/director's answer to all that is "i don't know."

It's funny, the book people were mad that there were too many answers, like the comet + alien explanation.

I kept waiting for at least a nod to the glowing living writing/infinite gibberish poem thing from the book, that could have been cool cinematically.

I appreciated that, by combining the lighthouse and the below ground part, that it addressed the "tunnel versus tower" rumination in the book :)

can we talk about the tattoo

gina rodriguez had it, i think from the beginning
the dead exploded soldier in the pool had it
natalie portman had it when she was being interviewed, but not when she was in the shimmer. but she had a bruise on that spot, that the tattoo maybe ... grew from?

that was the one element that I actually wanted some explanation for, and I am not an explanation-wanter

tbh the real explanation is that it's an element introduced for science fiction film nerds to debate the significance of

"Under the Skin" is a good example of a sci-fi adaptation that jettisons most of the novel (including the overexplained backstory) and vastly improves it in the process

Parts of this felt incoherent to me. I don't really see how the major theme of "self-destruction" maps onto the mutational acceleration in Area X--unless the idea is that self-destruction is the expression of a deeper Life Force--that Life is just a fancy way to Die, etc.

xp i haven't read the novel so not sure whether it's an improvement or not

but one criticism i read of "under the skin" that i thought was valid is that it relies on knowledge of things outside the movie (like already knowing it's based on a novel about an alien harvesting food) to make sense of it

I had no idea what Under the Skin was about and I thought that the abduction of humans for _some need_, although it being food wasn't clear, was communicated by the end.

xp I felt like the theme of self-destruction existed only because that's what the exploration group brought with them. There's no indication that whatever alien element has changed Area X has desires or intentions in any human way -- it appears to be reacting to whatever impulse is carried in, as the physicist states

You could theorize that it's like a virus that wants to exist and coexist with the environment where it's appeared. Only instead of trying to find a homeostasis with pure biological function, it's also attempting to balance with psychology and physiology. So it's attempting a yin-to-yang approach with intent.

i guess centering an entire movie around an entity/character with literally no motivations or goal is an ... interesting approach?

around an entity/character with literally no motivations or goal is an ... interesting approach?

metaphor for nature?

Sounds like... science fiction to me!

The idea that something alien would be intelligent in the way we perceive intelligence, or perceives reality in the way we do, is difficult to convey.

Arrival was kind of a lightweight version of that in that we could see entities that seemed to be biological and, although they communicated much differently, they seemed to have motivations and goals. That made it more of a reveal when their perception of reality was shown to be incredibly different from our own, even if all other things were equal.

Parts of this felt incoherent to me. I don't really see how the major theme of "self-destruction" maps onto the mutational acceleration in Area X--unless the idea is that self-destruction is the expression of a deeper Life Force--that Life is just a fancy way to Die, etc.

― ryan, Monday, March 5, 2018 6:37 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that’s pretty much what Garland was going for. Thanatos/death drive on macro and micro levels of the story.

found this film really mediocre. promising first third but it just becomes rote at some point. no team has returned, okay, i got it, this is one of THOSE movies. and it is; just it then turns all wannabe psych at the end. and the effects keep getting worse. plus all those silly flashbacks! and mannnnn the script in this thing. on the nose and clunky as hell throughout.

also it's weird how "the shimmer" doesn't "refract" anything that's just constantly in the background, like it doesn't mutate their shoes into super soakers or ice cream and the grass and most trees are still basically normal, gravity and molecular bonds are all good, etc. too expensive i guess. that it turned into the "floridada" video at the end was acceptable i guess.