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

Welp, I guess there’s nothing more that needs to be said. Lock thread!

Netflix release tomorrow (so midnight tonight, if that is how Netflix works?). I've been avoiding this thread until I can watch it, with great anticipation.

Darn, Netflix UK actually says 12th March, the Guardian misled me by saying it was the 11th.

this was pretty good. I think it might be an unfilmable book, though. too bad all of the creeper stuff was removed, and the mind control stuff taken out. I kept expecting JJL's character to snap her fingers and say a code-word. otherwise, what was her motivation? hand-wave, hand-wave terminal illness? my biggest overall complaint is that the psychedelia after the floaty alien thing (which was way cool) was droney and overlong. the homunculus was overdone, and the burning went on too long, and the plot could've been served better by more spacing at the beginning of the picture. oh well. maybe extended edition will have more of the initial disorientation stuff. it could also have less of Natalie Portman's back mid-affair.

haven't read the books. thought the movie was real good. feel like ppl have ridiculous high bars for movies now. it was...good! good is nice! great is different! not everything has to be the ultimate!

this movie was so amazing that i lit myself on fire

Another thing. I read a piece with Oscar Isaac talking about how he filmed this across the street from Star Wars. Both movies have slender women who climbing into unexplained seaside ooky space butts to confront... themselves? Is it possible they used the same set and redressed it?

Who wore astral anus better? Amidala or Rey?

da fuq

watched this last night and it was... fine?

it's basically stalker + the last of us + images of present-day pripyat + that video that went viral a while back of the weird worm that jizzes out a root system all over a rock tho innit

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

this is v otm tho, they nailed the look of the place perfectly

One of the financiers David Ellison tried to get changes made to the last half hour which in my opinion was the saving grace of the film. Thankfully Scott Rudin had final cut.

I'm browsing David's Wikipedia and his sister Megan's - has there ever been a starker divide between the quality of two siblings work?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Ellison

Big fan of the book, thought this film was absolutely dreadful, just bland and generic with none of the creepiness. Also Portman having seven years in the military and rising to full professor at Johns Hopkins would be I guess sixty? And the very subtle cancer metaphor of the book was somewhat overstated by I don’t know, ten overt mentions of cancer in the dialogue? What a waste. A massive letdown.

I'm wondering if the sound/visual component is going to be completely lost on anyone not able to see this in the theater (or without some ridiculous home theater) because the design was pretty striking on a large screen and droning sound

I enjoyed a lot of the design - especially the bear and the fungal efflorescence of the body in the lighthouse - but the drones were pretty rote to me, just like "we're laying in this drone bed to make this otherwise unremarkable scene portentous" trailer type work.

the soundtrack is pretty good tbh

although I swear one of the bass drone to rhythmic sections at the end sounds like a moderat song. I should bother Geoff Barrow about it on twitter so he can swear at me :)

Barrow has said on twitter that the first minute or two of that cue is Moderat, and then they riff on it

I'm pretty sure Matthew did not hear the film in a cinema?

whoa!

I should follow him on twitter

nah he's mostly an incoherent grumpy middle-aged bloke

found it though:

Yeh they did the first minute of the alien
Scene on the film we took it onto the climax from there it an amazing track &
We’ve tried to not be assholes and take the credit for it.

Quite right, I'm in Australia and it is only on Netflix here. Watched it on my friend's setup and to be fair I don't much like the picture or sound quality there. Whereas I realise these things are particularly important to a film like this, I found the characters clichéd and falsely motivated, and the worst crime was the total absence of tension. The book thoroughly creeped me out with its themes of bodily invasion, altered perception etc. But the transformation was handled poorly, a few key shots (and frankly stupid microscopy) replacing the relentless infected feel of the novel. A couple of digital deer with flower horns and a bunch of public art level topiary. The other crime was the "brightness" and perceptual shift in the narrative was written as an internal thing in the book, a sense that Lena's mind is being colonised, but adding it to big wide objective camera shots in the film make it seem like she was fine mentally.
And where was the crawler? Instead we got a silly Dr Who regeneration in a set left over from Prometheus. The ever-evolving optical fungus which resulted from that was brilliant, though.
I liked Ex Machina by the way. I guess I'll watch it again in better circumstances and see if I change my mind, it's happened before.

A couple of digital deer with flower horns and a bunch of public art level topiary.

I didn't read the book but that was kinda my issue too - - - this really needed some Rick Baker type talent in the makeup and effects department, to give us a sense of subtle wrongnesses starting to pile up in the body and in the setting. Just felt like they were in some southern swamp where occasionally something weird would pass through. Would be cool if the water and sky themselves look increasingly wrong, or if the buildings they find and inhabit don't just look abandoned but changed. Not something OTT, but things looking and feeling out of place, idk. I'm thinking of like, House of Leaves but with everything, not just the walls and floors, unsettlingly fluid and unreliable.

OTM, this and the sense that the changes might equally be perceived / perceptual as well as actual differences in real world things, and the increasing unease that such a distinction doesn't even exist, are key to the book's weird power.

If I'd read the book I'm sure I'd resent those things for their absence, happy enough that I didn't!

worst crime was the total absence of tension

People were crawling out of their chairs both times I saw it in the cinema.

Barrow has noted that the sound mix is inferior on Netflix for no apparent reason, and has generally been dropped 5dB btw

Apparently cinema screenings have started to be added at some English theatres due to demand.

matthewk and doctor casino otm... they started on this with everyone waking up with no memory of setting up camp etc and then just dropped it

I'm wondering if the sound/visual component is going to be completely lost on anyone not able to see this in the theater (or without some ridiculous home theater) because the design was pretty striking on a large screen and droning sound

this is otm, the sound design was very very good

sense that Lena's mind is being colonised, but adding it to big wide objective camera shots in the film make it seem like she was fine mentally.

I definitely did not read the film as telling me she was fine mentally. By the time she gets to the beach she has begun to abandon a sense of self, abandoning all her supplies and shelter & seeming more drawn to the locus, or carried by inertia, than heading by wilful intent. She is jolted back into agency on learning the fate of her husband, a reminder of her core reason for entering the shimmer.

matthewk and doctor casino otm... they started on this with everyone waking up with no memory of setting up camp etc and then just dropped it

This is actual storytelling, not a sloppy error. We learn that they have travelled for days , and thus have presumably had their minds about them until now. At the point they reawaken, perhaps the memory lapse is a result of making it through the "outer wall" of the shimmer -- as the film progresses, we learn that (in addition?) the minds of everyone within the zone break down.

There's no need to go back and fill in what happened prior: the absence is in fact specific information we have been given, as fellow travellers on this leg of the journey.

i think what rogermexico was getting at was that having established this loss of memory and time, there are no further weird time glitches or sense that time moves differently inside the shimmer or anything like that. it's all filmed naturalistically, time seems pretty ordinary there actually, and there's not even a token "look at your hair, it's grown eight inches while mine looks the same!" or whatever kind of scene.

It's already been established that time moves weirdly inside but appears normal-ish to the inhabitants though, through Benedict Wong's interrogation of Portman about how long she was inside, and (afawk) Oscar Isaac's uncertainty about how long he was away.

I definitely would have enjoyed more weirdness personally! But I think Garland did a great job of dropping signposts to weirdness while keeping the onscreen narrative clear for the audience of multiplex normies for whom this big-budget action film was made.

if id ve known this was so stalkerish id prob have skipped it

sic I think you've convinced me to see this again when I get a good opportunity, I so wanted to like it.

smh sic you misunderstood my post completely

tbf it becomes less clear every time I read it

maybe your DNA is being refracted?

I enjoyed this, but feel somewhat underwhelmed. Part of that is undoubtably that a lot of the visuals and sound were wasted on my laptop viewing - I wish I could have seen it at the cinema.

I've not read the book(s?), but want to now, hoping that there's a bit more to dig into and think about there, as I really like the whole premise and much of what the film did, but in general I think I wanted it to go further/deeper with the weirdness, mystery, wonder, creepiness...

The books are satisfyingly weird. Also, the first had lot of disorientation based on time. Lots of moments of “how did the tents get set up?” I had hoped that more of that would show up on film, but I understand that it kind of stalls the storytelling.

i loved the books. they put me in a trance. very memorable reading experience.

The movie really does seem like a half-remembered or reimagined version the first book, by someone who has placed it in the history of film science fiction. They’re very different things

Garland's whole thing about not reading the other two books is kind of weird