Annihilation is yet another unique film, featuring a diverse range of characters and a mostly-female cast, but nobody watched it. Also, there are some large spoilers below.
Heading directly to Netflix in some regions, Annihilation is director Alex Garland's latest film -- previous works are 28 Days Later and Ex Machina -- and features some of the strangest, unique elements we've seen in blockbusters for some time.
For the most part, Annihilation is scientific-fantasy, displaying a strange dimension in which everything is refracted, including genetic information, allowing lifeforms to constantly rewrite one another. The narrative itself is interesting, and the world built holds a lot of secrets that remain hidden from view, which makes following the characters instead more of a chore given the blatant narrative structure of the film; it's similar to that of Alien: a team discovers something strange, and eventually the all get picked off and you're left with the protagonist.
Given the limited world-building, it makes the film feel very rushed. Things happen far too quickly and there's simply not enough room for the story to breathe and just let us discover the strangeness of this dimension alongside the characters. With the obvious narrative structure, it makes caring for the story a bit harder. We know we don't need to get attached to the characters because they aren't sticking around, and the world itself begins to feel bland, with only minor moments feeling interesting.
There's a moment in which a deformed-like bear uses the helpless voice of a lost friend to manipulate people into blindly running towards it; this particular event stood out as both discomforting and thrilling. It worked wonderfully alongside the eeriness, and made the strange refracted land feel all that much more terrifying and out of control. The problem is that it doesn't do that often enough.
The end result becomes predictable, uneventful, and not particularly special. There's a plethora of potential substance that would've made everything fit more neatly together, but the backstory of the protagonist pushes in front and attempts to make us care for her poor prior actions, as if she's the point of interest. She never is.