There was a lot of talk about "Annihilation". Here I will not stop the whole drama, but in general Paramount gave up the Netflix distribution rights that supported director Alex Garland ("Ex Machina") and his categorical refusal to make changes to satisfied the studio's fears that the film is "too intellectual," that it will not be "digestible" enough that the main character is not "sympathetic enough" and similar nonsense that only interferes with the artistic vision and is basically the main reason to get the same confection in cinemas.
The film is based on Jeff Vandermire's "Southerne Reindeer" trilogy. The good thing about this is that Garland did not speak verbally on the first book, but he preferred to adapt it "as a dream for the novel". The story traces Lina (Natalie Portman), a biologist part of a team of five female scientists (Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Lee, Sonia Mizuno) who are on a dangerous mission in Zona H. Lina risks her own life by joining to the suicide expedition. She also has a personal motive - an answer to what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac), who appears outrageously ill after disappearing a year earlier during a secret military mission in the Zone. "Annihilation" structure is a little shaken and can irritate some, but it's worth concentrating because the movie does not rely on blurring your eyes and distracting you from the plot's leaps, and uses (like "First Contact ") to build the story to better illustrate themes and create a truly thrilling culmination for the characters. The final is an absolute pleasure for every intelligent fiction fan, I would even say art fiction, like Jonathan Glazer's "Under the Skin". "Annihilation," despite its almost cumbersome ending, is not enough arts-fartsy to repel you with pseudophylophical reflections on the nature of life.
Almost all of the themes are visualized - those about the duality, self-destruction, division and evolution of the cells can be seen in the form of a glass of water, running deer or action by the characters, so even if you do not come out of science or philosophy, your subconscious will capture the basic. In fact, in its core, "Annihilation" can be seen as a family movie. Of those embarrassing, like "Do not say good-bye," in which the characters change to unrecognizable. It can also be seen as a story about the struggle of mankind with the disease that spreads if we assume that threatening force in this case is something like extraterrestrial cancer, an organism that evolves, absorbs everything and changes it. In one of the scenes, Lina reads the book "Immortal Henriette Lax" (Skyprint), which describes the shocking endurance of cancer cells that overwhelm man and whisper hopes of immortality.
With an enormously modest budget of 55 million "Annihilation," it looks colorful, lush and alien enough to convince you in the fantastic world of the characters. Beings are threatening, especially when (in one of the truly scary scenes) they make a call with familiar human voices. No wonder Stephen King is a fan of the books, with all the psychological strain and the allegory of fears (and sins). In the scene of entering the lighthouse towards the end of the film, it is possible to see the visual reference of H.G Giger, suggesting the lion-crash clash with cosmic horror. Despite the obvious resemblance, writer Vandermyr denies Zone X is influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker Zone or Picnic by the side of the road by brothers Strugatsky. It is curious, however, that the names of the four women came from the post-modernist fantasy "The Crystal World", which has become a modern classic James Ballard, in which the character enters a jungle infested with a phenomenon that overturns everything into a crystal. The topic of the disease (this time tuberculosis) is also affected there, so it's no wonder that Garland has been inspired by it.
It's a real pleasure to see R-rated fantasy like "Annihilation," in which all characters are women without being a political cause and blowing everywhere in the advertising campaign. As best seen in this review, against the backdrop of all the strains of the industry to please the thirst for gender compensation, the top quality female film has remained worthlessly neglected. Its revenue is half the budget, and that could be the best film for the first half of the year. There is no point in digging into analyzes, explanations or the slightest narrative of the story. Anyone who has affinity to such genre stories will watch the movie anyway, others may come to the combination of horror, fiction, and bio-existential thriller. For me personally, Garland has established himself as one of the bravest narrators of stories and he deserves respect for not making any compromises with his vision. Hopefully the poor financial results do not prove to be a stumbling block to his future development as an artist. Surely there are many stories he wants (and can) tell. It is a pity that in the current situation this will happen mostly on the small screen.